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ADMIRAL    BLAKE 


PRINTED    BY 

SPOTTISWOODE    AND    CO.,    NEW-STREET   SQUARE 

LONDON 


Edited  by  ANDREW  LANG 


ADMIKAL    BLAKE 


DAVID    HANNAY 

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NEW    YORK 
D.     APPLETON    AND     COMPANY 

1886 


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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE. 

The  authorities  for  the  life  of  Blake  are  scanty  and  of 
dubious  value.  He  is,  of  course,  frequently  mentioned  in 
the  Calendar  of  State  Papers  (Domestic),  1649-57,  but  the 
references  to  him  are  in  a  great  majority  of  cases  purely 
official  and  of  little  interest.  Other  mention  of  him  is  to 
be  found  in  Rushworth,  Thurloe,  and  the  compilers  and 
memoir- writers  of  the  time.  In  Thurloe  are  some  of  his 
despatches,  and  of  the  orders  sent  him  when  on  foreign 
service  in  his  later  years. 

An  account  of  the  first  battle  of  the  Dutch  war  was 
published  by  authority  under  the  title  of  '  The  Answer  of 
the  Parliament  of  the  Commonwealth  of  England  to  three 
Papers  delivered  in  to  the  Council  of  State  by  the  Lords 
Ambassadors  Extraordinary  of  the  States-General  of  the 
United  Provinces.'  It  gives  the  English  version  of  the 
preliminaries  of  the  encounter,  and  may  be  compared  with 
the  Dutch  story  as  told  in  the  life  of  Cornelius  Van  Tromp, 
Martin's  son  and  successor. 

There  are  also  official  or  semi-official  '  Narratives '  of 
the  capture  of  the  Plate  Ships,  and  of  the  attack  on  Santa 
Cruz,  published  by  authority. 

No  life  of  the  Admiral  was  written  till  nearly  half 
a  century  after  his  death.  In  1704  one  appeared  in  a 
collection  of  '  Lives  English  and  Foreign.'  It  was  an  at- 
tempt to  supply  a  want  with  indifferent  means.     When  the 

267946 


vi  Bibliographical  Note. 

reaction  against  Walpole's  policy  had  brought  on  the  war  of 
Jenkin's  Ear,  and  there  was  a  revival  of  interest  in  the  old 
naval  glories  of  the  country,  two  lives,  by  very  different 
hands,  were  written  to  meet  the  popular  demand.  Dr. 
Johnson  turned  the  life  of  the  collection  into  good  English. 
His  short  biography  has,  of  course,  an  independent  literary 
value,  but  it  does  not  pretend  to  be  an  original  authority. 

About  the  same  time  there  appeared  '  A  History  and 
Life '  professing  to  be  the  work  of  a  gentleman  bred  in  the 
family.  It  was  manifestly  written  in  Grub  Street  while 
Vernon's  capture  of  Portobello  was  a  fresh  and  glorious  feat, 
but  if  the  author  did  not  use  up  some  local  tradition  he  was 
a  clever  fellow  with  a  dash  of  Defoe  in  him. 

Mr.  Hepworth  Dixon's  'Life/  published  in  1852,  is  a 
work  of  undoubted  research,  and  had  at  least  the  advan- 
tage of  being  written  before  his  style  had  reached  its  full 
maturity. 

A  long  and  careful  article  on  Blake  will  be  found  in 
'  The  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,'  vol.  v. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  TAGE 

I.  TO   THE   CIVIL  WAR        .....                        .1 

H.  THREE    SIEGES              ...                         ....        11 

III.  THE   NAVY   OE   THE   COMMONWEALTH       ,           .           .            .35 

IV.      THE  PURSUIT   OF   RUPERT 48 

V.  IN   THE   CHANNEL,   AND   AT   WHITEHALL           .                                64 

VI.      WAR  WITH  HOLLAND 75 

VII.      THE   DUEL   WITH   TROMP 98 

VIII.      IN   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 114 

IX.      CHASING   THE   PLATE   SHIPS 133 

X.  THE   CAPTURE   OE   THE   PLATE   SHIPS             .           .           .      .      151 

XI.      SANTA    CRUZ   DE   TENERIPE 165 

XII.  CONCLUSION      .           .           .           .           .            .           .           .      .       179 

INDEX .191 


ROBERT    BLAKE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

TO   THE   CIVIL   WAR. 

When  Nelson  was  about  to  sail  on  the  one  unsuccessful 
enterprise  of  his  life — the  attack  on  Santa  Cruz  de  Tene- 
rife — he  wrote  these  words  to  Earl  St.  Vincent :  i  I  do 
not  reckon  myself  equal  to  Blake  :  but,  if  I  recollect 
right,  he  was  more  obliged  to  the  wind  coming  off  the 
land  than  to  any  exertions  of  his  own.'  '  The  greatest 
sailor  since  our  world  began'  was  not  wholly  just  in 
his  implied  criticism  on  the  seventeenth-century  Ad- 
miral. Blake  did  not  sail  into  the  harbour  of  Santa 
Cruz  blindly  relying  on  the  chapter  of  accidents  to 
give  him  a  means  of  retreat,  but  this  sentence  is  none 
the  less  peculiarly  fit  to  stand  at  the  head  of  his  bio- 
graphy. If  Eobert  Blake  had  no  other  claim  to  be 
remembered,  it  would  still  be  enough  to  entitle  him  to 
a  high  place  among  our  heroes,  that  he  planned  and 
successfully  carried  out  an  enterprise  which,  a  hundred 
and  fifty  years  later,  in  the  midst  of  a  war  of  continual 
victories,  still  seemed  over-bold  to  Horatio  Nelson. 

B 


2  Robert  Blake 

Bobert  Blake,  like  the  great  soldier  and  statesman 
who  became  his  sovereign,  <  was  by  birth  a  gentleman  ; 
living  neither  in  any  considerable  height,  nor  yet  in 
obscurity/  The  Blakes  were  indeed  a  family  of  less 
wealth  and  less  distinguished  connections  than  the 
Crom wells,  but  they  belonged  to  the  same  class.  They 
were  country  gentry  in  Somersetshire,  owning  land 
and  engaged  in  trade.  The  anonymous  author  of  the 
c  History  and  Life '  of  the  Admiral  probably  tells  the 
strict  truth  when  he  says  that  the  '  Blakes  of  Plansfield, 
in  Spaxton  parish,  were  of  good  antiquity,  but  of  no 
higher  account  as  to  descent  than  that  of  the  principal 
yeomanry.'  The  name  was  a  form  of  Black,  and  is  so 
spelt  by  the  author  of  the  '  Life  of  Cornelius  van  Tromp.' 
Early  in  Elizabeth's  reign  the  Blakes  were  settled  in 
Bridge  water,  and  were  prosperous  traders  of  sufficient 
standing  to  fill  the  most  important  municipal  offices  of 
the  town,  and  sufficient  wealth  to  leave  legacies  to  the 
poor.  A  tradition  no  better  founded  than  such  things 
usually  are,  tells  how  the  first  information  of  the  sailing 
of  the  Invincible  Armada  was  brought  by  a  Bridgewater 
ship,  the  property  of  Humphrey  Blake,  the  Admiral's 
father.  Whether  he  did  the  State  this  service  or  not,  it 
is  certain  that  he  was  a  prosperous  man  who  left  behind 
him  a  considerable  fortune  and  a  very  large  family. 
The  fortune  is  put  at  8,000Z.,  a  much  larger  sum  in  the 
early  seventeenth  century  than  it  would  be  in  these 
days.  Even  at  the  end  of  the  last  century,  Bos  well 
wrote  of  the  Thrales'  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  thou- 
sand pounds  as  he  would  have  written  of  a  million,  or 
even  two,  in  this  year  of  grace  1886.  In  1625,  the  date 
of  Humphrey  Blake's  death,  8,000Z.  was  a  third  of  the 


To  the  Civil  War  3 

income  of  the  richest  noble  in  England,  the  Earl  of 
Worcester,  and  common  report  is  exceptionally  menda- 
cious if  a  hundred  thousand  would  bear  the  same 
proportion  to  the  equivalent  revenue  now.  The  money 
was  invested  in  an  estate  at  Knoll  Hill,  near  Bridgewater, 
which  continued  in  the  Admiral's  possession  till  his 
death,  and  passed  to  his  brother.  The  names  of  thir- 
teen sons,  of  whom  six  grew  to  manhood,  and  of  two 
daughters,  have  been  preserved,  and  there  is  some 
reason  for  believing  that  even  this  long  list  is  not 
exhaustive.  Eobert  Blake  was  the  eldest  of  the  family. 
His  baptism  is  entered  in  the  parish  register  under  the 
date  of  September  27,  1599,  and  his  parents  must 
have  been  lax  in  the  discharge  of  their  religious  duties 
if  they  deferred  the  ceremony  for  more  than  a  week 
after  his  birth.  He  was,  therefore,  some  five  months 
younger  than  Oliver  Cromwell.  As  he  owes  his  fame 
to  the  discharge  of  duties  forced  on  him  by  the  civil 
war,  but  not  sought  by  any  ambition  of  his  own,  the 
records  of  his  early  life  are  necessarily  scanty.  He 
was  a  middle-aged  man  before  he  gave  up  the  quiet  life 
of  a  country  gentleman.  So  little  is  known  about  him 
that  it  is  possible  in  his  case  to  apply  the  system  of 
modern  historians  in  the  most  developed  form,  and  in- 
corporate all  the  authorities  in  the  text  verbatim.  They 
are  in  fact  only  two — Anthony  Wood  and  Clarendon. 
The  first,  giving  a  list  of  B.As  in  his  c  Fasti,'  under  the 
date  of  February  10,  1617,  says:  '  Robert  Blake  of 
Wadham  College.  This  right  valiant  person  having 
taken  no  higher  degree  in  this  University,  I  must  there- 
fore make  mention  of  him  in  this  place.  Born  therefore 
he  was  at  Bridgewater  in  Somersetshire,  being  the  son 

v  2 


4  Robert  Blake 

and  heir  of  Humphrey  Blake  of  that  place,  gent.,  but 
descended  of  an  antient  family,  of  the  Blakes  of  Blanch- 
field  in  the  said  county.  In  the  beginning  of  Lent 
Term  in  1615,  he  being  then  about  fifteen  years  of  age, 
was  matriculated  in  the  University  as  a  member  of  St. 
Albans  Hall,  about  which  time,  standing  for  a  scholar- 
ship of  C.  0.  Coll.  with  Rob.  Hegge  and  Rob.  Newlin, 
was  put  aside,  whether  for  want  of  merit  or  friends  I 
cannot  tell.  While  he  continued  in  the  said  Hall  he 
was  observed  by  his  contemporaries  to  be  an  early  riser 
and  studious,  but  withal  he  did  take  his  pleasure 
fishing,  fowling,  and  sometimes  in  stealing  of  swans. 
Before  the  time  came  when  he  was  to  take  a  degree  in 
arts  he  translated  himself  to  his  countrymen  in  Wadham 
Coll.,  and  as  a  member  of  that  house  he  did  stand  for  a 
fellowship  of  Merton  Coll.  with  Alex.  Fisher,  John 
Douglas,  Edw.  Reynolds,  John  Earl,  &c.  an.  1619,  but 
whether  it  was  for  want  of  scholarship,  or  that  his  person 
was  not  handsome  or  proper  (being  but  of  stature  little) 
which  Sir  Henry  Savile,  then  Warden  of  that  Coll., 
did  much  respect,  he  lost  it,  continued  in  Wadhani 
Coll.  without  the  taking  of  any  other  degree,  and  in 
1623  wrote  a  copy  of  verses  on  the  death  of  the  learned 
Camden.  Afterwards  he  went  into  his  own  country, 
where  he  lived  in  the  condition  of  a  gentleman,  but 
always  observed  to  be  puritanically  inclined.5 

So  far  Anthony  Wood,  saying  very  much  what 
Clarendon  says  in  his  more  stately  way  as  far  as  the 
mere  facts  go.  c  He  was  a  man  of  a  private  extraction, 
yet  had  enough  left  him  by  his  father  to  give  him  a 
good  education,  which  his  own  inclination  disposed  him 
to  receive  in  the  University  of  Oxford,  where  he  took 


To  the  Civil   War  5 

the  degree  of  a  Master  of  Arts  [it  was  a  B.A.],  and  was 
enough  versed  in  books  for  a  man  who  intended  not  to 
be  of  any  profession,  having  sufficient  of  his  own  to 
maintain  him  in  the  plenty  he  affected,  and  having  then 
no  appearance  of  ambition  to  be  a  greater  man  than  he 
was.  He  was  of  a  melancholy  and  sullen  nature,  and 
spent  his  time  most  with  good  fellows,  who  liked  his 
moroseness  and  the  freedom  he  used  in  inveighing 
against  the  licence  of  the  times  and  the  power  of  the 
Court.  They  that  knew  him  inwardly  discovered  that 
he  had  an  anti-monarchical  spirit,  when  few  men 
thought  the  government  in  any  danger.'  This  account 
is  doubtless  substantially  accurate,  and  may  be-  accepted 
with  the  proviso  that  Clarendon  wrote  after  the  civil 
war,  and  does  not  profess  to  have  known  Blake  per- 
sonally. He  would  naturally  interpret  the  Admiral's 
early  opinions  by  the  light  of  his  later  actions. 

If  the  amount  of  evidence  is  not  considerable,  it  has 
the  merit  of  affording  a  reasonably  good  text  for  specu- 
lation. And  the  biographers  have  not  been  wanting  to 
themselves.  They  have  asked  how  Blake  came  to  lose 
the  fellowships,  and  what  would  have  happened  to 
England  if  he  had  won  either.  Even  Dr.  Johnson  has 
left  a  sententious  reflection  on  Sir  Henry  Savile's  curious 
whim  as  a  thing  not  to  be  expected  from  an  editor  of 
Chrysostom.  In  the  course  of  conversation,  if  the 
subject  had  ever  come  up,  the  Doctor  would  probably 
have  pointed  out  that  Wood's  passing  reference  to  the 
Warden's  liking  for  tall  fellows  was  not  necessarily 
much  more  than  a  proof  of  the  Oxford  man's  fondness 
for  a  mild  jest  at  the  expense  of  the  Head  of  a  College. 
Neither  was  it  necessary  for  Mr.  Hepworth  Dixon  to 


6  Robert  Blake 

bring  in  Blake's  puritan  principles  to  account  for  his 
failure.  Biographers  have,  in  fact,  jumped  to  the 
conclusion  that  because  the  student  from  Somersetshire 
beat  Tromp  in  the  fifties  he  was  qualified  to  hold  a 
fellowship  thirty  years  earlier.  For  xlie  rest,  if  he  had 
gained  one,  it  would  not  have  prevented  him  from 
girding  on  the  sword  in  1642.  Colonel  Michael  Jones 
made  a  very  efficient  commander  of  the  Parliament's 
army  in  Ireland,  lawyer  as  he  was,  and  a  fellowship, 
even  if  he  had  held  it  so  long,  would  not  have  prevented 
Blake  from  defending  Taunton.  As  regards  his  learn- 
ing we  may  safely  accept  Clarendon's  statement  that  the 
future  Admiral  worked  at  Oxford  as  much  and  as  little 
as  thousands  of  others  who  have  gone  through  the 
University  because  it  was  part  of  their  education  as 
gentlemen,  but  with  no  intention  of  qualifying  for  a 
learned  profession.  He  could  quote  Latin  to  the  end 
of  his  life.  The  verses  on  Camden's  death  were  not  by 
him,  but  by  William  Blake,  perhaps  a  younger  brother, 
and  it  is  possible  that  Wood's  mistake  as  to  their  author- 
ship led  him  into  exaggerating  the  length  of  Robert's 
stay  at  the  University. 

Upon  the  death  of  his  father  in  1625,  Blake  entered 
into  possession  of  the  family  estate  of  Knoll  Hill,  and 
with  it  he  would  naturally  undertake  the  duty  of 
educating  and  establishing  in  life  his  very  numerous 
brothers  and  sisters.  This  obligation,  which  was  the 
burden  attached  to  his  privileges  as  eldest  son,  probably 
accounts  for  the  fact  that  he  lived  unmarried ;  '  though 
some  would  insinuate,'  says  a  biographer,  '  that,  as  far 
as  his  religion  would  allow,  he  had  a  monkish  turn,  and 
others,  that  he  was  a  woman-hater.'      His  election  as 


To  the  Civil   War  7 

member  for  Bridgewater  in  1640  is  to  a  certain  extent 
a  proof  of  the  truth  of  Clarendon's  statement  that  Blake 
was  known  for  the  freedom  of  his  comments  on  the 
King's  administration.  Two  Puritan  divines,  Devenish 
and  Norman,  are  said  to  have  been  mainly  instrumental 
in  securing  his  return.  Indeed,  the  Admiral's  whole 
life  is  there  to  prove  that  he  was  one  of  the  majority  of 
thinking  Englishmen,  Clarendon  himself  and  Falkland 
among  them,  who  heartily  disliked  Charles's  method  of 
government.  England  was  not  oppressed  by  a  grinding 
tyranny  between  1625  and  1640,  nor  was  it  the  country 
to  have  endured  oppression.  The  habit  of  talking  of 
the  King  as  if  he  had  been  a  Duke  of  Alva,  popular  a 
few  years  ago,  may  now  be  given  up  ;  but  if  Charles  was 
not  a  tyrant  he  was  guilty  of  the  folly  of  continually 
advancing  claims  which  would  have  led  to  tyranny  if 
applied  by  a  stronger  man.  His  habit  of  appealing  to 
a  higher  law  which  gave  him  the  right  to  override  the 
law  as  known  to  Englishmen  was  in  itself  enough  to 
irritate  his  subjects.  They  feared  for  the  future  if  they 
were  not  seriously  oppressed  in  the  present.  And  this 
government  which  asked  the  country  to  trust  its  wisdom 
so  blindly  was  weak  at  home  and  imbecile  in  its  foreign 
policy.  Above  all,  Englishmen  suspected,  and,  as  we 
now  know,  with  justice,  that  the  Court,  if  not  the  King, 
was  prepared  to  go  to  dangerous  lengths  in  intriguing 
with  the  Pope  and  the  Catholic  Powers.  They  saw  the 
King's  fondness  for  all  that  seemed  to  tend  to  Rome, 
and  his  hearty  dislike  to  whatever  was  most  hostile  to  it. 
The  long  struggle  with  Spain  and  the  Catholic  reaction 
had  made  it  the  first  article  of  most  Englishmen's 
creed,  that  the  Pope  and  all  he  represented  were  the 


8  Robert  Blake 

visible  agents  of  the  Enemy.  It  is  permissible  to  have 
no  doubt  of  Blake's  opinion  on  the  subject.  He  almost 
certainly  looked  at  the  Eomanising  tendencies  of  the 
Court  and  the  misgovernment  of  the  King  as  parts  of 
the  same  whole,  which  it  was  the  duty  of  Englishmen 
to  amend  at  the  first  fair  opportunity.  With  these 
opinions  he  would  naturally  be  a  welcome  candidate  for 
the  country  party,  when  the  failure  of  the  first  Bishops' 
war  l  compelled  Charles  to  have  recourse  to  his  Parlia- 
ment after  an  interval  of  eleven  years. 

Blake  was  not  re-elected  after  the  hasty  dissolution 
of  the  Short  Parliament.  His  place  was  taken  in  the 
Long  Parliament  by  a  Wyndham.  The  fact  that  the 
Wyndhams  were  steady  Koyalists  throughout  the  war 
is  not  in  itself  a  proof  that  there  had  been  any  change 
of  opinion  in  Bridgewater  between  the  beginning  and 
the  end  of  1640.  In  the  November  of  that  year  the 
country  had  been  angered  and  frightened  into  una- 
nimity. It  was  determined  to  be  done  with  the  kind 
of  government  it  had  endured  for  more  than  a  genera- 
tion under  James  and  Charles.  Men  who  were  to  fight 
for  the  King,  and  men  who  were  to  fight  for  King  and 
Parliament,  were  of  one  mind  when  the  Houses  met  at 
Westminster.  While  this  vehement  feeling  lasted,  it 
mattered  little  who  was  chosen  by  a  constituency  as 
its  representative,  as  long  as  he  was  not  a  mere  courtier, 
and  Bridgewater  would  naturally  send  a  member  of  a 
great  neighbouring  house  to  Parliament.  The  influence 
of  the  Wyndhams  was  strong  in  that  part  of  Somerset, 

1  It  is,  I  trust,  not  impertinent  to  remind  the  reader  that  the 
*  first  Bishops'  war,'  so  called,  was  the  King's  futile  attempt  to 
support  Episcopacy  in  Scotland  in  1639. 


To  the  Civil   War  g 

and  would  be  vigorously  used  at  such  a  crisis  as  a 
matter  of  course. 

Fifteen  months  later  a  great  change  had  come  over 
the  country.  The  attack  on  the  King's  methods  of 
government  had  inevitably  developed  into  an  attack  on 
the  hereditary  power  of  the  crown.  With  this  change 
had  come  division  ;  on  one  side,  a  profound  distrust  of 
the  character  of  the  King,  and  an  equally  deep  hatred 
of  the  ecclesiastical  policy  of  Laud,  had  taken  form  in  a 
series  of  measures,  which,  whatever  else  we  may  think 
of  them,  were  assuredly  calculated  to  produce  a  very 
sweeping  change  in  the  character  of  the  English  Mon- 
archy and  Church.  Men  who  thought  first  of  all  of  the 
liberties  of  England  and  the  puritan  side  of  religion 
were  prepared  to  support  these  measures.  On  the 
other  hand,  those  to  whom  the  ancient  Monarchy  and 
the  Church  of  their  youth  were  dear  recoiled  when  they 
began  to  see  whither  the  Parliament  was  tending.  In 
the  early  summer  of  1642  England  was  at  the  parting 
of  the  ways,  and  though  she  knew  it  not,  was  on  the 
verge  of  the  great  civil  war. 

Sainte-Beuve,  in  his  essay  on  D'Aubigne,  has  noted  the 
old  Huguenot's  delight  in  the  hearty  zeal  of  the  French- 
men's fighting  in  the  religious  struggle  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  It  was  little,  in  D'Aubigne's  opinion,  that 
torrents  of  blood  were  spilt,  but  much  that  Frenchmen 
could  freely  throw  away  their  lives  for  a  cause.  We 
may  be  pardoned,  or  even  think  no  pardon  is  needed, 
for  looking  in  some  such  spirit  on  our  own  great  struggle 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  There  was  hypocrisy  and 
spite  and  acrid  priggery  on  the  side  of  the  Parliament. 
There  was  unpatriotic  intrigue  and  dissolute  ruffianism 


io  Robert  Blake 

on  the  side  of  the  King,  but  it  is  not  by  these  things 
that  either  side  is  to  be  judged.  The  meaner  men  of 
the  parties  could  never  have  emerged  from  obscurity 
except  by  the  involuntary  help  of  nobler  fighters.  It 
may  be  said  of  the  country  as  justly  as  of  its  King,  that 
it  nothing  common  did  nor  mean  upon  that  memorable 
scene.  Cavalier  and  Roundhead  both  fought  like  men, 
and  it  is  good  for  a  country  when  its  sons  can  so  fight 
for  principles. 

Blake  took  the  side  of  the  Parliament,  and  having 
once  drawn  the  sword,  he  threw  away  the  scabbard.  In 
the  absence  of  any  details  of  his  words  and  actions  we 
are  reduced  to  argue  from  the  conduct  of  the  class  to 
which  he  belonged,  in  order  to  form  an  idea  of  his 
course.  As  a  small  country  gentleman  of  puritanical 
leanings  and  grim  anti-papal  patriotism  his  natural 
place  was  with  the  Parliament.  He  took  it,  and  in 
the  spirit  at  least  he  kept  it  till  he  died  on  board  the 
i  George,'  entering  Plymouth  Sound,  worn  out  by  the 
greatest  series  of  victories  save  one  ever  gained  by  any 
English  admiral. 


II 


CHAPTER  II. 

THREE   SIEGES. 

The  crisis  of  the  civil  war  was  passed  before  the  name  of 
Blake  began  to  be  of  any  considerable  mark  among  the 
Parliamentary  officers.  His  great  feat,  the  defence  of 
Taunton,  was  performed  during  a  year  beginning  six 
days  after  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor  and  ending  in 
the  July  of  the  following  year ;  when  the  New  Model 
advanced  into  the  West,  after  ruining  the  King's  army 
in  the  Midlands  at  Naseby.  During  these  critical 
months  he  alone  upheld  the  cause  of  the  Parliament  in 
the  important  belt  of  country  which  extends  from  the 
Severn  to  the  Channel,  and  he  did  his  cause  vital  service 
by  hindering  the  Western  army  from  marching  to  the 
help  of  the  King.  Up  to  July  1644,  he  had  been  known 
only  as  an  able  and  trustworthy  officer  in  Popham's 
regiment  of  militia.  As  might  be  expected,  his  early 
services  have  shone  with  a  certain  amount  of  glory 
reflected  from  his  later  victories.  Family  tradition,  and 
even  contemporary  Royalist  opinion,  have  credited  him 
with  having  raised  a  troop,  variously  said  to  have  been 
horse,  foot,  or  dragoons,  for  the  forces  of  the  Parliament. 
This  statement  seems  to  have  been  dictated  rather  by 
the  opinion  of  the  writers  as  to  what,  considering  his 


12  Robert  Blake 

subsequent  eminence,  he  ought  to  have  done,  than 
founded  on  any  knowledge  of  what  he  actually  did. 
Wherever  his  name  appears,  it  is  as  a  member  of 
Popham's  regiment.  Whatever  recruiting  Jie  did  was 
doubtless  for  his  own  corps,  and  in  that  service  he 
would  naturally  not  be  remiss.  Indeed,  when  the  war 
began,  there  was  no  occasion  to  raise  particular  corps 
for  the  Parliament's  service  in  Somersetshire.  The 
organised  force  of  the  county,  formed  of  the  militia 
regiments  of  Sir  John  Horner  and  Colonel  Alexander 
Popham,  was  loyal  to  the  Houses.  They  had  so  marked 
a  superiority  over  the  unorganised  Royalists,  that  when 
the  Marquis  of  Hertford  attempted  to  serve  the  King's 
summonses  of  array  at  Wells  in  the  summer  of  1642, 
he  was  driven  into  Hampshire  without  even  being  able 
to  strike  a  blow.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  absence  of 
any  conscious  tendency  to  a  social  revolution  on  the 
Parliamentary  side,  that  Popham's  regiment  was  raised 
by  precisely  the  means  used  to  form  forces  for  the  King. 
Alexander  Popham  himself  was  a  country  gentleman 
of  large  estate,  and  he  recruited  his  men  from  among 
the  tenants  on  his  manor  of  Houndstreet,  near  Bridge- 
water.  Blake  took  his  place,  according  to  the  social 
ideas  of  the  time,  as  lieutenant  or  captain  under  his 
wealthy  neighbour.  At  a  later  period  we  shall  find  the 
name  of  one  of  the  Pophams  associated  with  Blake's 
among  the  chiefs  of  the  fleet. 

A  detailed  account  of  the  first  campaigns  in  the 
West  would  be  out  of  place  here,  but  some  leading  facts 
must  be  mentioned  for  the  purpose  of  showing,  as  far  as 
possible,  what  was  Blake's  share  in  these,  the  most  pic- 
turesque and  chivalrous  episodes  of  the  civil  war.    After 


Three  Sieges  13 

his  failure  at  Wells  in  August  of  1642,  the  Marquis  of 
Hertford  retired  to  Sherborne  in  Dorset.  Here  he 
remained  till  Goring  surrendered  Portsmouth  to  the 
Parliament,  and  then  finding  his  position  untenable, 
marched  across  Dorset  and  Somersetshire,  to  Minhead 
on  the  Bristol  Channel.  That  he  should  have  been  al- 
lowed to  march  right  past  the  force  which  had  lately 
driven  him  from  Wells  is  a  proof  of  the  military  inex- 
perience of  both  sides  in  the  early  times  of  the  war,  and 
also  of  the  prevailing  belief  that  the  quarrel  would  be 
settled  by  the  first  battle  between  the  King  and  the  main 
Parliamentary  army.  The  Somersetshire  men  were  pro- 
bably under  the  impression  that  it  was  nowise  incum- 
bent on  them  to  fight  unless  they  were  directly  attacked. 
If  so,  they  soon  had  good  cause  to  wish  they  had  been 
more  stirring.  The  marquis  himself  took  ship  at 
Minhead,  and  passed  over  to  South  Wales,  but  he 
despatched  a  small  body  of  horse  to  Cornwall,  under  the 
command  of  Sir  Ralph  Hopton,  the  best  officer  in  the 
King's  service.  This  handful  of  cavalry,  and  its  brave 
and  skilful  leader,  were  soon  reinforced  by  the  Cornish 
Royalists  under  Sir  Revil  Greenvil,  Sir  Nicholas 
Slanning,  and  Sir  John  Trevannion,  and  from  the  two 
was  formed  the  famous  Cornish  army  which  by  the  end 
of  the  summer  of  1643  had  conquered  all  the  West, 
except  the  ports,  for  the  King,  and  had  joined  hands 
with  his  forces  from  the  midland  counties.  What  share 
Blake  had  in  the  various  scandalous  Parliamentary 
defeats  under  their  incompetent  generals,  the  Earl  of 
Stamford,  and  Ruthven,  at  Bodmin,  Tavistock,  Stratton, 
and  elsewhere  it  is  impossible  to  say.  As  part  of  the 
garrison  of  Bristol,  to  which  his  regiment  belonged  was 


14  Robert  Blake 

detached  under  the  Earl  in  the  West,  it  may,  however, 
be  the  case  that  he  learned  his  business  in  the  wholesome 
school  of  defeat. 

While  the  Cornishmen  were  organising  and  pre- 
paring for  their  advance,  the  Somersetshire  Eoyalists 
had  not  been  wholly  idle.  The  Stawells,  Wyndhams, 
and  other  Eoyalist  gentry,  whose  estates  for  the  most 
part  lay  to  the  west  of  the  Parret,  began  to  stir  for  their 
cause.  As  early  as  the  summer  of  1642  blood  had  been 
drawn  by  Sir  John  Stawell's  arraymen  at  Marshall's 
Elms,  and  although  the  King's  partisans  were  not  yet 
strong  enough  to  make  head  against  the  Parliamenta- 
rians, they  kept  up  a  struggle  for  influence  for  a  time. 
It  is  in  some  part  of  this  confused  conflict  that  we  must 
place  an  event  in  Blake's  life  which  is  singularly  cha- 
racteristic of  the  Puritan  and  the  Englishman.  His 
regiment  was  in  possession  of  Bridgewater,  engaged  in 
trying  to  bring  the  surrounding  country  over  from  its 
allegiance  to  the  Wyndhams.  Among  the  captains  of  the 
regiment  was  Samuel  Blake,  his  younger  brother.  One 
day  *  Captain  Samuel  Blake  was  diverting  himself  at  a 
little  inn,  then  and  now  the  Shoulder  of  Mutton,  at 
Pawlet,  four  miles  from  Bridgewater  '  Q  Hist,  and  Life,' 
p.  67),  when  he  heard  that  a  Eoyalist  officer  was  at 
Combwich,  in  the  neighbourhood,  engaged  in  levying 
men  for  the  King.  The  array  captain  was  attended  by 
an  armed  party,  and  Samuel  Blake  was  alone,  which 
of  itself  was  sufficient  reason  for  keeping  quiet.  The 
Malignant,  moreover,  was  on  his  way  to  the  Eoyalist 
side  of  the  Parret,  which  was  a  further  motive  why 
Captain  Samuel  Blake  should  c  take  his  bate  and  go 
home '  peacefully.     With  a  rashness,  however,  which 


Three  Sieges  15 

may  be,  without  excessive  want  of  charity,  partly  ac- 
counted for  by  the  excellence  of  the  '  bate '  at  the 
Shoulder  of  Mutton,  the  Parliamentary  officer  started 
in  pursuit  of  the  intruders,  and  caught  them  up  at 
Streachill.  Here  he  persisted  in  attacking  them,  and 
was  inevitably — but  one  hopes  not  without  reluctance 
on  the  part  of  arraymen — cut  down.  The  bad  news* 
was  soon  brought  to  Bridgewater,  and  reported  to  the 
officers  of  Popham's  regiment.  None  of  them  were  in- 
clined to  carry  it  to  Blake,  who  was  known  to  have 
a  particular  affection  for  his  rash  brother.  While  they 
were  discussing  in  whispers  and  debating  who  should 
tell,  in  the  constrained  way  natural  to  the  circum- 
stances, Blake  joined  them,  and  soon  saw  that  some- 
thing was  amiss.  The  absence  of  his  brother  would  of 
itself  be  a  painful  warning.  He  was  not  the  man  to 
hang  back  for  hearing  the  worst,  and  his  direct  ques- 
tion soon  extorted  the  evil  news,  with  all  the  circum- 
stances. When  the  story  was  ended,  he  made  the 
laconic  and  superficially  heartless  comment,  '  Sam  had 
no  business  there,'  and  went  stoically  about  his  duty. 
When  the  work  was  done  he  returned  to  his  quarters, 
and  then  the  natural  man  let  his  grief  have  its  way. 
When  his  door  was  shut  his  servant  heard  him  break 
into  weeping,  exclaiming,  c  Died  Abner  as  the  fool 
dieth.'  He  would  be  a  strange  Englishman  who  did 
not  sympathise  with  Iago's  reluctance  to  carry  his  heart 
upon  his  sleeve  for  daws  to  peck  at. 

By  the  summer  of  1643  the  Royalists  were  masters 
in  the  West.  The  Cornish  army  and  Rupert's  men  had 
joined  hands  in  Somersetshire,  and  had  utterly  routed 
the  unlucky  Sir  William  Waller  at  Eoundaway  Down. 


1 6  Robert  Blake 

In  July  the  combined  Royalist  armies  sat  down  before 
Bristol.  The  town  was  insecurely  held  by  Colonel 
Nathaniel  Fiennes  for  the  Parliament  with  a  weakish 
garrison.  There  was  a  strong  Eoyalist  party  in  Bristol, 
and  a  plot  to  hand  it  over  to  the  King  had  only  recently 
been  crushed  by  stern  military  executions.  Neither 
was  the  town  strong  in  itself.  It  lies  in  the  low  ground 
round  the  juncture  of  the  Avon  and  the  Frome.  On 
the  south  or  Somersetshire  side  it  was  not  commanded, 
but  on  the  north  or  Gloucestershire  side  its  defences 
were  composed  of  forts  on  Prior's,  St.  Michael's,  and 
Beacon  Hill,  which  skirt  the  Frome.  Blake  was  in 
command  of  Prior's  Hill.  These  forts  were  connected 
by  a  low  wall  hastily  constructed,  and  not  appreciably 
strengthened  by  a  shallow  and  for  the  most  part  dry 
ditch.  As  long  as  this  line  was  held  Bristol  was  safe, 
but  when  it  was  pierced  at  any  point  the  town  ceased 
to  be  defensible,  for  it  lay  '  in  a  hole,'  as  a  Royalist 
officer  who  served  in  the  siege  justly  points  out.  Once 
inside  the  line,  the  assailants  could,  of  course,  clear  it 
by  charging  the  defenders  in  flank.  This  is  precisely 
what  happened.  The  intaking  of  Bristol — to  use  Dal- 
getty's  expressive  though,  unhappily,  obsolete  word — 
was  an  excellent  example  of  the  sieges  of  the  civil  war. 
In  these  remarkable  military  operations — until  Crom- 
well appeared  on  the  scene— the  general  method  seems 
to  have  been  to  send  '  fire-balls  '  and  other  missiles 
over  the  wall  at  the  roofs  of  the  houses,  until  you 
thought  you  had  thoroughly  frightened  the  enemy,  and 
then  to  fall  on  with  pike  and  sword,  keeping  your 
cavalry  ready  for  a  charge  up  the  streets  as  soon  as 
the  gates  had  been  opened  by  the  infantry.     Against 


Three  Siegbs  ly 

a  weak  garrison  or  a  sympathetic  town,  this  procedure 
had  its  merits  and  succeeded  very  well.  Where  these 
conditions  were  wanting,  as  at  Gloucester  or  Taunton, 
it  commonly  resulted  in  the  loss  of  hundreds  of  men 
uselessly  shot  down  at  the  edge  of  a  ditch.  The 
Royalists  made  their  attacks  from  both  sides :  the  Cor- 
nish army  on  the  south,  and  Rupert's  force,  from  Durd- 
ham  Down,  on  the  north.  They  prepared  for  the 
storm  by  a  series  of  inefficient  cannonades,  night 
attacks,  and  other  '  military  masquerades,'  which  made 
'  beautiful  pieces  of  danger  '  in  the  dark.  In  the  course 
of  these  preparatory  operations,  Prior's  Hill  fort  was 
i  shrewdly  torn,'  but  it  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
effectually  breached.  At  last,  on  the  night  of  July 
25-26,  after  various  feints  and  postponements,  the 
Royalist  chiefs  made  their  final  and  successful  storm. 
The  time  had  been  fixed  for  the  early  morning  of  the 
26th,  but  the  Cornish  men  were  so  eager  to  begin  that 
they  anticipated  the'  hour,  and  rushed  furiously  at  the 
southern  fortifications  in  the  dark.  They  were  decisively 
repulsed,  with  the  loss  of  their  gallant  leaders,  Slanning 
and  Trevannion.  As  soon  as  Rupert's  men  on  Durd- 
ham  Down  saw  the  flash  of  the  Cornish  army's  fire, 
they,  too,  mustered  for  the  attack,  burning  not  to  be 
outdone.  One  consequence  of  all  this  undisciplined 
ardour  was  that  the  northern  force  had  to  attack  without 
their  storming  ladders,  which  were  not  yet  ready,  and, 
except  at  one  point,  they  fared  as  might  have  been  ex- 
pected. Lord  Grandison  commanded  the  force  which 
attempted  Prior's  Hill  fort,  and  advanced  with  all  the 
attention  to  art  possible  in  his  unprovided  state.  Cap- 
tain Blake  was  found  on  the  alert,  with  his  matches 

C 


1 8  Robert  Blake 

burning.  Attacks  to  right  and  left  of  the  fort,  headed 
by  lieutenants  of  Lord  Rivers'  regiment,  with  fifty  men 
apiece  but  no  ladders,  were  summarily  beaten  off. 
Colonel  Fawcett  attached  a  petard  to  a  gate,  but  it  ex- 
ploded outwards  only.  Then  the  repulsed  men  were 
drawn  together,  reinforced  from  the  reserve,  and  having 
failed  at  the  weaker  points,  were  sent  ladderless,  as 
before,  to  try  the  desperate  task  of  storming  the  fort. 
They  failed  to  shake  the  nerves  of  Captain  Kobert  Blake 
and  his  musketeers,  and  were  again  beaten  off  with  loss. 
Hopeless  as  the  game  was,  the  Royalists  were  not  pre- 
pared to  give  it  up.  Their  officers  had  many  weak- 
nesses, but  want  of  courage  was  never  one  of  them,  and 
Sir  Ralph  Dutton  brought  his  men  on  again,  to  be 
again  uselessly  sacrificed.  A  last  attempt  was  now 
made  by  Lord  Grandison  himself.  Sword  in  hand,  he 
led  his  soldiers  into  the  very  ditch.  By  this  time  Blake 
had  become  so  conscious  of  his  strength  that  he  no 
longer  waited  to  be  attacked,  but  sallied  out  and  met 
the  enemy  at  the  foot  of  the  wall.  A  purely  profes- 
sional soldier  would  have  profited  by  his  assailant's  folly 
to  win  an  easier  victory,  and  have  shot  him  down  at 
leisure  from  over  the  parapet,  but  in  the  civil  war  there 
was  a  certain  love  of  fighting  for  its  own  sake,  and  a 
spirit  of  fair  play,  which  made  men  do  these  rash  things. 
The  Parliamentarians  yielded  to  the  carnal  vanity  of  a 
desire  to  show  the  Malignants  that  the  saints  were  not 
afraid  to  meet  them  on  equal  terms,  and  so  received  them 
at  push  of  pike  in  the  ditch.  Here,  just  as  day  was  break- 
ing, the  last  fight  was  fought.  It  was  short,  and  for  the 
Royalists  terribly  costly.  Lord  Grandison  soon  fell,  mor- 
tally wounded.     Colonel  Owen,  who  took  his  place,  was 


Three  Sieges  lg 

disabled  a  few  minutes  later  by  a  gunshot  wound,  and 
then,  at  last,  the  Royalists  broke  and  fled  down  the  hill. 
Meanwhile,  the  attacks  on  Brandon  and  St.  Michael's 
Hills  had  ended  no  better  for  the  assailants,  but  a 
line  of  defences  is  no  stronger  than  its  weakest  part, 
and  the  Eoyalists  had  found  the  fatal  spot.  In  the  dip 
between  Brandon  Hill  and  Prior's  Hill  the  ditch  was 
shallow  and  dry,  the  wall  low,  and  mostly  made  of  turf. 
A  body  of  Royalist  infantry,  led  by  Colonel  Washington, 
scrambled  over,  apparently  without  meeting  serious  op- 
position, for  the  Parliamentarians  had  not  force  enough 
to  hold  all  the  wall.  A  breach  was  soon  made  in  the 
turf  barrier  by  Colonel  Washington's  pikes,  and  then 
Rupert's  horse  swept  through  and  cleared  the  line  by  a 
vigorous  charge.  As  soon  as  the  Prince  had  forced  his 
way  to  the  suburbs  of  Bristol,  Fiennes  surrendered. 
He  has  been  severely  judged  for  the  act,  and  in  the 
following  year  he  was  condemned  to  death  by  a  court- 
martial  for  his  alleged  cowardice.  The  sentence  was 
undoubtedly  harsh,  since  Bristol  was  really  indefensible 
when  once  the  forts  on  the  heights  were  turned,  and  as 
the  citizens  were  not  prepared  to  make  a  Saguntum  of 
their  town,  there  was  nothing  left  to  do  but  to  surrender. 
It  is  sufficient  excuse  for  him  to  point  out  that  Rupert 
himself  had  to  surrender  to  the  New  Model  under  very 
similar  circumstances.  Fiennes,  unfortunately  for  him- 
self, drew  suspicion  on  his  courage  by  showing  a  flurry 
which  was  doubtless  largely  due  to  a  consciousness  that  he 
had  damaged  his  political  career  by  military  failure.  One 
among  his  other  laches  served  to  attract  some  attention 
to  the  name  of  Blake.  Fiennes,  in  his  confusion,  forgot 
to  send  news  of  his  surrender  to  the  officers  command- 

c  2 


20  Robert  Blake 

ing  in  the  forts.  When  they  were  summoned  by  the 
Royalists,  two  of  them  at  least — Blake  at  Prior's  Hill, 
and  Captain  Husbands  at  Brandon  Hill,  very  properly 
refused  to  give  up  their  posts  till  the  surrender  had 
been  notified  to  them  by  their  own  commander.  For 
this,  it  is  said  that  Rupert,  with  his  customary  violence, 
theatened  to  hang  them,  and  Clarendon  adorns  the 
tale  by  saying  that  Blake  (he  does  not  mention  Hus- 
bands) was  forgiven  on  the  plea  of  ignorance  urged  by 
interceding  friends.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  such  inter- 
cession was  needed,  the  two  officers,  as  Prince  Rupert 
would  know  as  soon  as  he  heard  the  truth,  having  only 
done  their  strict  duty. 

From  Bristol,  Blake  marched  away  with  his  regiment, 
probably  more  or  less  plundered  by  the  Royalists  who 
violated  the  capitulation.  In  the  interval  from  July  1643 
to  April  1644,  he  was  promoted  to  the  rank  of  lieutenant- 
colonel,  and  at  the  latter  date  he  appears  again  as  one 
of  the  officers  commanding  under  Colonel  Ceely,  the 
governor  of  Lyme.  As  Rushworth  speaks  of  him  in  July 
1644  as  c  a  stout  commander  belonging  to  the  garrison 
of  Lyme,'  it  is  probable  that  he  had  been  quartered  there 
immediately  after  the  loss  of  the  port  on  the  Avon. 
The  capture  of  Bristol  was  the  turning-point  of  the 
Royal  fortunes  in  the  West.  Up  to  then  their  forces 
had  won  a  series  of  well-deserved  victories,  but  from 
the  moment  their  cause  appeared  triumphant,  a  decline 
began  which  reduced  the  Western  army  from  its  place  of 
honour  among  the  King's  forces  to  a  mere  rabble.  The 
loss  of  Sir  Bevil  Greenvil,  Sir  Nicholas  Slanning,  and 
Sir  John  Trevannion,  the  first  at  Lansdown,  the  other 
two  at  Bristol,  had  removed  the  high-spirited  gentlemen 


Three  Sieges  21 

who  fought  for  King  and  Church.  Hopton  was  called 
on  service  elsewhere.  The  folly  of  the  King  in  dis- 
placing the  Marquis  of  Hertford — the  head  of  a  family 
which  had  once  claimed  the  crown,  and  therefore  perhaps 
suspect  in  such  troubled  times — had  deprived  him  of 
the  services  of  one  who,  if  he  was  not  a  general  or  states- 
man, was  at  least  a  patriotic  English  noble.  In  the  room 
of  these  leaders  the  King's  cause  in  the  West  came  to  be 
represented  by  Prince  Maurice,  a  pale  copy  of  his  brother 
Rupert,  and  by  such  unworthy  adventurers  as  Sir  John 
Berkeley  and  that  triple  traitor,  the  drunken  Goring. 
With  such  generals  the  Western  army  soon  became  de- 
moralised, and  then  drifted  to  ruin.  Soon  after  the  cap- 
ture of  Bristol,  Maurice,  accompanied  by  Lord  Carnarvon, 
marched  to  reduce  Dorsetshire  to  obedience.  He  was 
even  then  defied  by  Poole  and  Lyme,  in  which  Blake  was 
perhaps  already  stationed,  and  turned  from  them,  without 
making  an  attack,  to  hasten  to  Exeter,  where  the  Earl 
of  Stamford  was  still  holding  out  for  the  Parliament. 
Exeter  surrendered  in  September  1643.  Then  Maurice, 
after  quarrelling  with  Carnarvon,  who  rode  away  to  die 
for  the  King  elsewhere,  made  an  unsuccessful  attack  on 
Plymouth,  and  in  the  spring  of  1644  reappeared  in 
Dorsetshire,  and  sat  down  before  Lyme.  It  was  of 
infinite  importance  to  the  King,  who  was  stifling  in  the 
midland  counties,  to  get  access  to  the  sea.  As  a  natural 
consequence,  the  Parliament  was  concerned  to  baffle  him. 
Lyme,  a  place  of  no  military  value  in  itself,  was  desired 
by  the  Royalists  because  it  was  a  Channel  port  very  con- 
veniently situated  for  running  cargoes  of  arms  from 
France  or  Holland.  The  Parliament  being  well  aware 
of  that  fact,  had  hastened  to   strengthen  these  ports 


22  Robert  Blake 

after  the  fall  of  Bristol,  and  the  Earl  of  Warwick,  their 
admiral,  who  was  cruising  in  the  Channel,  had  charge 
among  his  other  duties  to  assist  the  garrison.  In  the 
town  there  were  about  a  thousand  men,  while  the 
besieging  army  of  Prince  Maurice  is  variously  put  at 
about  twice  and  a  half  or  three  times  that  number.  On 
April  21  [o.s.]  he  sat  down  before  the  town,  and  there 
he  remained  until  June  15  [o.s.].  Up  to  May  23,  when 
the  Earl  of  Warwick's  squadron  arrived  and  relieved  the 
town,  the  Prince  and  the  garrison  had  a  variety  of  brisk 
encounters,  marked  by  the  usual  diversity  of  cannonades, 
assaults,  repulses,  and  sallies.  According  to  Colonel 
Weir,  who  wrote  a  c  diurnal '  of  the  siege  up  to  the  arrival 
of  the  Earl  of  Warwick,  Prince  Maurice's  guns,  though 
they  played  very  hot,  did  astonishingly  little  damage 
except  to  the  thatched  roofs  of  the  houses.  It  is  there- 
fore not  surprising  that  his  assaults  were  uniformly 
unsuccessful,  since  a  thousand  resolute  men,  fighting 
behind  a  barrier  or  in  loopholed  houses  are  a  fair  match 
for  rather  less  than  three  times  their  own  number  of 
assailants.  Colonel  Ceely,  however,  did  not  confine 
himself  to  his  lines.  Before  the  end  of  April  he  had 
been  already  joined  by  two  Parliamentary  war-ships, 
commanded  by  Captains  Seamaster  (otherwise  Somaster 
or  Somersted  in  the  careless  spelling  of  those  days),  and 
Jones.  These  officers  not  only  supplied  him  with 
stores  but  landed  a  naval  brigade,  and  on  April  30  (o.s.) 
the  garrison,  helped  by  our  l  bold  seamen,'  sallied  out, 
and  according  to  Colonel  Weir,  killed  so  many  of  the 
enemy  *  that  the  water  that  supplied  the  town  was 
coloured  with  blood.'  For  the  next  three  weeks  he  con- 
tinues to  report  '  thundering  alarums,'  with  encounters 


Three  Sieges  23 

not  a  few.  When  the  Admiral  anchored  off  the  town 
on  May  23,  he  found  the  houses  of  Lyme  much  battered, 
but  its  defences  in  good  order.  The  garrison  had  suf- 
fered little  loss  of  life,  but  was  sadly  in  want  of  shoes, 
stockings,  clothes,  and  pay.  Their  need  of  food  was  so 
serious  that  the  sailors  of  the  fleet  offered  to  sacrifice 
a  fourth  of  their  rations  of  bread  for  the  next  four  months, 
1  and  to  bate  it  proportionally  out  of  every  day's  allow- 
ances, yet  with  hopes  that  the  State  would  make  it  good 
again.'  The  generosity  and  its  prudent  qualification 
are  alike  characteristic  of  the  British  seaman.  He  was 
ready  to  help,  but  saw  no  reason  why  the  official  gentle- 
men should  not  lend  a  hand  too.  The  contribution  of 
the  sailors,  together  with  what  else  the  Earl  could  spare, 
made  a  substantial  relief,  and  when  he  stood  to  sea 
after  helping  to  beat  off  another  assault  in  which  Weir 
and  Blake  were  both  wounded,  he  could  trust  the  town 
to  take  care  of  itself.  It  did  so  with  complete  success 
till  the  approach  of  Essex  compelled  Prince  Maurice  to 
raise  the  siege  and  march  away  to  Cornwall,  much  dis- 
credited, according  to  Clarendon,  by  his  failure  before 
such  an  insignificant  place. 

Although  Blake's  name  is  only  incidentally  men- 
tioned by  contemporary  authorities  on  the  siege,  it 
would  seem,  from  the  character  of  the  next  service  on 
which  he  was  employed,  that  he  had  risen  steadily  in 
the  estimation  of  his  superior  officers.  In  July  1644 
he  was  detached  with  Sir  John  Pye  to  make  an  attempt 
on  Taunton.  This  town  had  remained  in  the  hands  of 
the  Royalists  since  the  Cornish  army's  victorious  inva- 
sion of  Somersetshire,  and  was  still  held  for  them  by 
Colonel  Reeves.     When  Prince  Maurice  fell  back  before 


24  Robert  Blake 

Essex,  he  had  withdrawn  a  large  part  of  the  garrison, 
but  had  not  removed  the  stores  in  the  castle.  The 
hope  of  securing  this  magazine  would  have  been  enough 
to  tempt  a  flying  column  of  Roundheads,  but  they  had 
other  reasons  for  attempting  the  town.  Taunton  was 
not  only  the  centre  of  a  strongly  puritanical  district, 
but  was  of  inestimable  value  as  a  military  post.  It 
commanded  a  fertile  territory,  and  as  it  lay  on  the  line 
of  communication  between  the  West  and  the  midland 
counties,  a  puritan  garrison  within  its  walls  would  be 
a  particularly  irritating  thorn  in  the  side  of  the  Royalists. 
When  Sir  John  Pye  and  Blake  marched  out  of  Lyme, 
the  military  situation  was  very  favourable  to  their  enter- 
prise, as  Essex  had  swept  the  Royalists  out  of  the  field 
in  Somersetshire  for  the  moment.  On  July  8  the 
Parliamentary  flying  column  appeared  before  Taunton, 
and  summoned  Colonel  Reeves.  The  King's  officer 
made  no  resistance.  With,  a  mere  handful  of  men  as 
a  garrison,  and  an  unfriendly  town  to  hold,  he  was  in 
fact  in  no  position  to  fight,  and  he  did  the  best  he  could 
for  his  cause  by  obtaining  terms  which  allowed  him 
to  carry  his  soldiers  to  the  nearest  Royal  post.  He  was 
compelled  to  leave  his  stores,  and  so  the  captors  found 
'  in  the  castle  one  demi-culverin  and  ten  other  small 
pieces,  two  tons  of  match,  eight  barrels  of  powder,  store 
of  arms  and  ammunition,  with  much  household  furniture 
and  plenty  of  provisions.'  These  last  were  probably 
the  treasures  of  Malignants,  and  had  been  put  in  the 
castle  for  safe  keeping.  There  was  soon  to  be  need  for 
the  munitions  of  war. 

Blake  had  now  reached  that  crisis  in  a  soldier's  life 
which   has  been  fatal  to  so  many  promising  officers. 


Three  Sieges  25 

After  doing  good  work  as  a  subordinate,  he  was  now 
left  in  command,  and  in  no  easy  one  either.  Sir  John 
Pye  was  called  away,  and  Blake  was  appointed  governor 
of  Taunton,  with  the  rank  of  colonel.  Before  the  end 
of  1644  he  had  to  fight  for  his  post.  The  King  indeed 
made  no  attempt  on  the  town,  either  in  his  march  into 
Cornwall  in  pursuit  of  Essex,  or  during  his  return  east- 
ward after  receiving  the  surrender  of  the  Parliamentary 
foot  at  Foy  in  September.  He  had  good  reason  for  his 
neglect  as  long  as  the  Parliamentary  general's  army 
was  unbroken,  but  he  paid  dearly  for  leaving  Blake 
unattacked  on  his  return.  The  loss  of  Taunton  was 
destined  to  be  one  of  the  causes  of  the  ruin  of  the 
following  year.  It  was  Blake's  obstinate  defence  of  the 
town  '  which  indeed  disappointed  all  our  hopes/  says 
Clarendon,  '  both  in  men  and  money  in  that  great 
county,  for  it  kept  4,000  foot  and  5,000  horse  employed 
nearly  all  the  summer  of  1645.' 

The  leaguer  of  Taunton  was  twice  interrupted  by 
Royalist  defeats,  so  that  in  fact  Blake  had  to  defend 
his  post  through  three  sieges.  His  first  assailant  was 
the  Colonel  Wyndham  who  succeeded  him  as  member 
for  Bridgewater.  He  having  failed  to  hold  his  ground  in 
front  of  the  town,  was  replaced  by  Sir  Richard  Greenvil, 
who  was  wounded,  and  followed  by  Sir  John  Berkeley, 
who  was  driven  away  in  his  turn.  Goring  renewed  the 
siege  and  remained  there  till  Fairfax  and  Cromwell  came 
red-handed  from  Naseby  Field  in  hot  haste  to  make  an 
end  of  the  King's  army  in  the  West.  The  military  de- 
tails of  the  siege  are  of  the  kind  usual  in  the  civil  war. 
Taunton  was  then  a  country  town  of  greater  relative 
importance  than  it  is  to-day,  but  it  was  even  then  a 


26  Robert  Blake 

small .  place,  consisting  of  some  three  parallel  streets 
connected  by  alleys ;  with  its  church,  grammar  school, 
and  castle;  the  whole  being  surrounded  by  an  old- 
fashioned  wall.  Its  real  strength  lay  in  its  resolute 
garrison,  and  in  the  determination  of  its  citizens  to 
hold  out  to  the  last.  Against  this  post  the  Eoyalists 
brought  horse,  foot,  and  dragoons,  but  no  proper  batter- 
ing train,  and  apparently  no  sappers  and  miners.  They 
fired  over  the  wall,  and  burnt  down  whole  streets  of 
houses,  but  they  made  no  breach,  and  the  loss  of  life 
they  succeeded  in  inflicting  was  trifling.  Two  hundred 
in  killed  and  wounded  is  reported  to  have  been  the 
extent  of  the  garrison's  casualties  throughout  the 
lengthy  siege.  Blake  was  not  helped  only  by  the 
military  inefficiency  of  the  Royalists,  but  by  the  feuds 
which  divided  their  commanders  and  led  to  the  endless 
intrigues  and  quarrels  described  over  whole  pages  of 
Clarendon.  This  disintegration  of  the  besiegers  was  of 
material  assistance  to  the  Parliamentary  commandant, 
and  has  much  to  do  with  accounting  for  his  successful 
defence.  Had  the  King  s  officers  been  united,  and  had 
their  attacks  been  properly  made,  Taunton  must  soon 
have  fallen.  It  is,  however,  no  diminution  of  Blake's 
glory  that  he  had  not  to  defend  his  post  against  a  united 
or  efficient  enemy.  No  general  can  do  more  than 
avail  himself  to  the  utmost  of  his  opponents'  mistakes 
or  weakness.  His  defence  of  Taunton  was  no  such 
feat  as  the  defences  of  Londonderry  or  Saragossa,  but 
if  Taunton  had  been  assailed  as  these  towns  were,  no 
courage  or  skill  could  have  prolonged  the  defence  for  a 
week. 

The  first  summons  to  surrender  came  from  Colonel 


Three  Sieges  27 

Wyndham,  and  was  answered  with  a  defiance  in  stern, 
pious,  puritan  style.  l  These/  wrote  Blake,  '  are  to  let 
you  know  that,  as  we  neither  fear  your  menaces  nor 
accept  your  Proffer,  so  we  wish  you,  for  the  time  to 
come,  to  desist  from  all  overtures  of  the  like  nature 
unto  us,  who  are  resolved,  to  the  last  Drop  of  our 
Blood,  to  maintain  the  Quarrel  we  have  undertaken, 
and  doubt  not  but  the  same  God  who  hath  hitherto 
protected  us  will,  e'er  long,  bless  us  with  an  issue  answer- 
able to  the  justness  of  our  Cause ;  however,  to  him  alone 
shall  we  stand  or  fall.'  Blake  was  soon  able  to  show 
that  the  spirit  of  the  garrison  was  c  answerable  '  to  the 
firmness  of  the  governor's  language.  While  Goring, 
who  should  have  been  covering  the  siege,  was  engaged 
in  one  of  the  numerous  drinking  bouts  or  equally 
numerous  intrigues  which  divided  his  time  between 
them,  a  Parliamentary  officer  of  the  name  of  Vandruske 
succeeded  in  slipping  past  the  Eoyalist  army  and 
bringing  a  force  of  horse  and  dragoons  into  Taun- 
ton. With  this  reinforcement  Blake  sallied,  attacked 
Wyndham  with  complete  success,  and  drove  him  in 
rout  back  to  Bridgewater.  The  defeat  of  Wyndham 
seems  to  have  opened  the  eyes  of  the  Eoyalists  to  the 
importance  of  Taunton.  Goring  and  the  council  of 
the  Prince  of  Wales  suspended  their  disputes  so  far  as 
to  make  some  preparation  for  an  effectual  siege,  and  in 
early  spring  Sir  Richard  Greenvil  sat  down  before  the 
town.  He  was  disabled  by  a  wound  at  an  early  period, 
and  succeeded  by  Sir  John  Berkeley,  a  Eoyalist  of  the 
Goring  stamp.  Sir  John  began  by  gaining  some  measure 
of  success.  He  stormed  an  isolated  post  at  Wellington 
House,  a  little  distance  out  of  Taunton,  and  ruined  it 


28  Robert  Blake 

completely.  Then  he  devoted  himself  for  months  to 
blockading  the  town,  to  firing  into  it,  and  to  laying 
stratagems  to  draw  Blake  out,  such  as  were  used  by 
the  Good  Lord  James  against  the  garrison  of  Castle 
Dangerous.  The  bombardment  failed  to  shake  the 
citizens,  and  the  stratagems  were  useless  against  the 
caution  of  Blake,  but  the  blockade  soon  began  to  reduce 
the  town  to  straits.  The  sufferings  of  the  townsmen 
do  not  seem  to  have  reached  a  point  which  a  German 
of  the  period  of  the  Thirty  Years  War  would  have  con- 
sidered as  far  removed  from  prosperity.  The  author  of 
the  '  Song  of  Triumph,'  composed  to  be  sung  on  May 
11,  in  memory  of  the  raising  of  the  siege,  has  obviously 
collected  all  that  his  own  experience  or  tradition  had 
to  tell  him  of  the  sufferings  of  the  time,  and  yet  it  is 
doubtful  whether  a  burgher  of  a  Thuringian  town  or  a 
peasant  of  the  Palatinate  would  have  recognised  his 
picture  as  representing  the  horrors  of  war  at  all.  Thus 
he  sings  in  barely  tolerable  verse  : 

Our  bread  was  fourteen  pence  per  pound, 

And  all  things  sold  full  dear, 
Which  made  our  soldiers  make  short  meals 

And  pinch  themselves  full  near. 

Our  beer  was  eighteen  pence  per  quart 

(As  for  a  truth  was  told) 
And  butter  eighteen  pence  per  pound 

To  Christians  there  was  sold. 

Still  beer  at  eighteen  pence  the  quart  represented 
grievous  discomfort  to  the  prosperous  townsmen  or 
yeomen  of  Taunton  Dean,  and  as  summer  drew  near,  it 
became  likely  that  worse  was  in  store  for  them.     A 


Three  Sieges  29 

local  tradition  tells  how  they  were  reduced  to  their  last 
pig,  and  how  Blake,  with  more  ingenuity  than  humanity, 
caused  the  poor  beast  to  be  whipped  at  different  parts  of 
the  walls,  in  order  that  its  squeals  might  mislead  the 
besiegers  into  thinking  that  the  town  had  still  whole 
herds  to  feed  on.  If  the  author  of  the  splayfooted 
'  Encomiastik '  published  after  Blake's  death  is  to  be 
believed,  he  gave  the  Royalists  a  kinder  proof  of  the 
abundance  of  his  resources.  Sir  John  Berkeley  sent 
in  a  trumpeter  to  summon  the  town.  His  message 
was  answered  as  Wyndham's  had  been,  and  then  the 
Parliamentary  colonel  gave  the  messenger,  who  was  in 
a  very  ragged  state,  a  new  suit  of  clothes.  The  object 
of  this  patronising  piece  of  kindness  was  undoubtedly 
to  irritate  the  Royalists,  but  the  trumpeter's  gain  was 
clear.  Meanwhile,  Blake  missed  no  opportunity  of  in- 
forming the  Parliament  of  the  dangerous  position  of  the 
town,  and  of  asking,  for  help.  He  seems  to  have  found 
little  difficulty  in  communicating  with  London,  by  means 
of  messengers  who  slipped  through  the  Royalist  lines. 
The  Parliament  was  fully  aware  of  the  importance  of 
relieving  Taunton,  and  answered  his  appeals  by  votes  of 
thanks  and  promises  of  assistance.  It  was  easier,  how- 
ever, to  promise  help  than  to  send  it.  The  quarrel  between 
Manchester  and  Cromwell,  between  the  Presbyterians 
and  the  root  and  branch  men,  had  come  to  a  head  in 
the  spring  of  1645,  and  had  caused  a  temporary  para- 
lysis of  the  Parliamentary  armies.  The  self-denying 
ordinance  had  for  a  moment  disorganised  their  forces, 
and  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  was  engaged  in  forming  the 
New  Model  at  Windsor.  This  invincible  body  was 
destined  to  bring  swift  ruin  on  the  King,  but  Sir  John 


30  Robert  Blake 

Berkeley's  blockade  was  beginning  to  press  heavily  on 
Taunton  before  it  was  ready  to  take  the  field. 

In  the  beginning  of  May,  the  time  had  at  last  come. 
Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  reported  his  army  ready  for  service, 
and  was  at  once  ordered  to  march  to  raise  the  siege 
of  Taunton.  He  broke  up  from  Windsor,  and  advanced 
with  his  whole  force  to  Blandford.  Here  messengers  from 
London  stopped  him  with  the  news  that  the  King  had 
drawn  his  army  out  from  Oxford,  and  was  threatening 
the  city  itself.  He  was  therefore  ordered  to  return  with 
the  bulk  of  his  troops,  and  to  detach  a  portion  only  to 
Taunton.  Fairfax  consequently  advanced  out  of  Bland- 
ford  on  the  road  to  Dorchester,  and  then  turned  east- 
ward, after  providing  for  the  service  in  the  West.  i  Ac- 
cordingly,' says  Sprigge,  c  a  Brigade  is  appointed  for 
Taunton,  of  four  regiments  of  foot,  viz.  Colonel  Welden's, 
Colonel  Fortescue's,  Colonel  Floyd's,  and  Colonel  In- 
glesby's;  commanded  by  Colonel  Welden  as  eldest 
colonel ;  unto  whom  six  companies  of  foot  belonging  to 
the  garrison  of  Chichester  joined  themselves  about 
Dorchester,  and  as  many  colours  from  Lyme  (Blake's 
old  comrades)  after  that ;  in  all  about  4  or  5,000  foot, 
besides  a  body  of  horse  of  1,800  or  2,000,  consisting 
of  Colonel  Graves  his  regiment,  Colonel  Cook's,  Colonel 
Popham's,  Colonel  Fitz-James's,  and  the  Plymouth 
regiment.  All  which,  horse  and  foot,  were  well  combined 
in  mutual  love  to  each  other  and  common  resolution 
against  the  enemy.'  With  this  high-spirited  and  united 
body,  Welden  advanced  by  forced  marches  to  within  ten 
miles  of  Taunton,  to  a  post  on  the  hills,  and  there  by  a 
preconcerted  signal  informed  Blake  that  he  was  at  hand 
to  help  him  in  driving  off  Sir  John  Berkeley. 


Three  Sieges  31 

There   was,  however,   no   need    for  fighting.     The 
news  of  Fairfax's  advance  to  Blandford  had  been  brought 
to  Sir  John,  and  he  at  once  saw  that  the  decisive  mo- 
ment had  arrived.     Believing  that  he  would  soon  have 
the  whole  Parliamentary  army  upon  him,  he  decided  on 
making  a  last  attempt  to  get  the  town.     A  few  days 
before  Welden  reached  the  neighbourhood,  the  Eoyalist 
general  divided  his  force ;  one  part  was  ordered  to  re- 
move to  the  eastward,  and  then  return  as  if  it  were  a 
Parliamentary  army,  and  make  a  sham  attack  on  the 
besiegers.     The  object  of  this  stratagem  was  to  draw 
Blake  out  to  help  his  supposed  friends,  when  the  whole 
Eoyalist   party  might   have   fallen    on   him.     As   the 
Parliamentary  commander  was  very  well  informed  of 
Welden's  movements,  and  did  not  hear  the  signal  agreed 
on,  he  kept  to  his  lines.     Whereupon  the  enemy  seeing 
their  wisdom  turned  to  foolishness,  t  fell/  in  the  words 
of  Sprigge,  'to  firing  the  town  with  their  granadoes 
and  mortar-pieces,  whereby  two  long    streets  of  the 
town,  of  fair  buildings,  were  burnt  to  the  ground,  and 
withal  they  stormed  most  furiously.      But  they  met 
with  a  gallant  commander-in-chief  in  Colonel  Blake, 
and  as  valiant  soldiers,  that  gave  them  such  showers  of 
lead  as  filled  the  trenches  with  their   dead  carcases.' 
The  repulse  was  complete,  but  the  Koyalists  seem  on  this 
occasion  to  have  entered  the  town,  and  to  have   been 
beaten  out  after  fierce  fighting.     In  this  last  encounter, 
tradition,  reported  by  the  dubious  Oldmixon,  tells  how 
one  Bawdon,   a  Parliamentary  officer,  had  his  thumb 
shot  off  while  engaged  in  driving  out  the  Royalists,  and 
i  protested  that  the  rogues  should  not  carry  it  away  with 
them/  which  one  does  not  suppose  they  would  be  likely 


32  Robert  Blake 

to  do.  Bawdon  was  of  another  opinion,  and  remained, 
searching  for  his  lost  thumb.  One  of  a  Royalist  party, 
which  had  barricaded  itself  in  an  alehouse,  and  accord- 
ing to  the  puritan  story,  were  tippling  in  the  midst  of 
all  this  fury,  saw  him  and  shot  at  him,  so  that  he  died 
a  revolutionary  victim  to  the  rights  of  property.  It  is 
also  recorded  that  while  Blake  was  fighting  on  the  walls 
the  pious  and  painful  Mr.  Welman  did  his  part  in  the 
defence  by  expounding  Malachi  iii.  6,  *  And  who  may 
abide  the  day  of  his  coming  ?  and  who  shall  stand  when 
he  appeareth  ?  for  he  is  like  a  refiner's  fire,  and  like 
fuller's  soap.' 

After  this  repulse  Sir  John  Berkeley  did  not  wait 
for  the  approach  of  the  Parliamentary  forces.  In  the 
belief,  as  he  averred,  that  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax's  whole 
army  was  marching  on  him,  he  broke  up  his  camp  in 
haste  and  disorder,  and  marched  off,  cutting  down  trees 
to  barricade  the  roads  behind  him.  With  the  storm  of 
the  11th  and  Welden's  entry  on  May  14th,  the  most 
trying  part  of  the  siege  was  over,  but  Taunton  had  not 
yet  seen  the  last  of  the  Royalists.  As  soon  as  Goring 
learnt  the  smallness  of  Welden's  forces,  he  collected  his 
troops  and  surrounded  the  town  again.  There  he 
remained  deaf  to  the  King's  appeals  for  help  in  the 
Midlands,  alleging  as  his  excuse  for  inaction  that  he 
could  not  leave  Taunton  in  the  hands  of  the  enemy,  and 
boasting  that  he  would  soon  compel  it  to  capitulate. 
The  presence  of  Welden's  troops  in  the  town  frightened 
the  Royalists  from  trying  an  assault,  though  they  were 
able  to  drive  the  garrison  in  when  it  attempted  to  sally, 
but  it  made  the  strain  on  the  provisions  very  heavy. 
Towards  the  middle  of  June  things  were  as  bad  as  ever. 


Three  Sieges  33 

Blake  and  Welden  were  sending  pressing  messages 
for  relief,  and  representing  that  their  ammunition  was 
running  short.  The  Parliament  promptly  voted  a  new 
force  for  the  relief,  and  Massey  the  Presbyterian,  who 
was  somewhat  in  disgrace  since  Manchester's  downfall, 
was  appointed  to  the  command.  He  had  no  opportunity 
of  distinguishing  himself  in  this  new  post.  The  great 
victory  at  Naseby  on  June  14  had  totally  disabled  the 
King  from  threatening  London,  and  left  Fairfax  at 
liberty  to  march  westward.  On  June  28  he  was  at 
Marlborough  in  Wiltshire.  He  reached  Blandford  in 
Dorset  on  July  2,  and  was  there  joined  by  Massey  with 
the  new  levies.  Here  he  learnt  that  Goring  had  already 
burnt  his  huts  and  drawn  off  to  Blackdown  on  the 
borders  of  Devonshire.  At  Dorchester,  which  he  reached 
next  day,  the  news  was  confirmed,  and  prisoners  taken 
by  a  party  of  his  horse  at  Crewkerne  gave  him  the 
further  good  news  that  the  Royalists  had  retreated  by 
Ilminster  to  Langport.  Fairfax,  with  his  troops  in 
admirable  order  and  spirit,  advanced  by  Beaminster  to 
Taunton,  and  the  siege  was  at  an  end. 

The  remaining  military  services  of  Blake  on  shore 
were  confined  to  the  blockade  of  Dunster,  a  stronghold 
of  the  Luterels  at  the  east  end  of  Exmoor,  and  to  the 
discharge  of  his  duties  as  governor  of  Taunton.  The 
castle  was  once  relieved  by  a  body  of  Royalist  horse,  who 
slipped  through  while  a  part  of  the  blockading  force  had 
been  drawn  off  to  Corfe  Castle.  Blake  was  not  able  to 
oppose  the  relief,  but  he  took  his  revenge  on  their 
return.  With  the  help  of  the  country  people  he  fell 
upon  the  rear  of  the  Royalists  and  cut  them  up  severely. 
The  castle  surrendered  early  in  1646,  when  the  capitu- 

D 


34  Robert  Blake 

lation  of  Barnstaple  enabled  Fairfax  to  despatch  two 
regiments  of  foot  to  Blake's  assistance.  In  the  course 
of  the  year  he  entered  the  Long  Parliament  for  Taunton 
as  a  '  recruiter'  in  place  of  Sir  William  Portman,  who 
had  been  expelled  for  malignancy.  As  a  member  of 
Parliament  he  was  compelled  to  resign  his  military  com- 
mand by  the  self-denying  ordinance,  and,  indeed,  there 
were  no  longer  any  troops  which  he  could  command. 
The  House  recognised  his  services  by  a  vote  of  500Z., 
and  rewarded  Taunton  by  a  gift  of  1,000Z.  to  help  it  to 
rebuild  its  ruined  houses.  After  the  surrender  of 
Hopton,  the  local  Parliamentary  forces  in  the  West 
were  disbanded,  and  the  New  Model  alone  remained  on 
foot.     The  first  civil  war  was  over. 


35 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE   NAVY   OF   THE   COMMONWEALTH. 

If  Blake  had  died  within  two  years  after  his  defence  of 
Taunton,  he  would  only  have  been  remembered  with  the 
Parliamentary  officers  of  the  second  rank,  with  Skippon, 
Brereton,  or  Massey.  His  career  in  the  House  was 
obscure.  He  does  not  appear  to  have  taken  any  part 
in  the  growing  quarrel  between  the  Presbyterians  and 
the  Independents.  In  the  spring  of  1648,  however, 
the  beginning  of  the  second  civil  war  opened  to  him  a 
new  field,  and  he  began  the  great  career  in  which  he  won 
in  some  respects  the  most  enviable  reputation  gained  by 
any  man  of  his  generation.  In  May  of  that  year  the 
squadron  in  the  Downs  revolted  and  passed  over  to  the 
Prince  of  Wales  in  Holland.  This  disaster  forced  upon 
the  Parliament  the  necessity  of  putting  the  navy  into 
thoroughly  trustworthy  hands,  and  on  February  24, 
16-Jf  (o.s.)  a  commission  was  issued  '  to  Colonel  Popham, 
Colonel  Blake,  and  Colonel  Deane,  or  any  two  of  them, 
to  be  Admirals  and  Generals  of  the  fleet  now  at  sea.' 
The  Committee  of  the  Navy  decided  that  they  were  to 
rank  in  the  order  in  which  their  names  were  written  in 
the  commission,  so  that  Blake  began  his  naval  services 
as  second  in  command  of  the  national  fleet. 

d  2 


$6  Robert  Blake 

The  navy  to  which  Blake's  services  were  so  suddenly, 
and,  according  to  modern  practice,  so  strangely  trans- 
ferred, was,  strictly  speaking,  the  force  we  know  by  the 
name  to-day.  It  was  a  permanent  armament  kept  on 
foot  in  time  of  peace,  and  governed  by  officials  in  con- 
tinual employment,  not  like  the  armies  of  the  time,  a 
body  raised  for  a  special  war,  and  disbanded  when  the 
fighting  was  over.  In  spite  of  this  continuity,  however, 
the  superficial  differences  are  so  great  that  the  navies  seem 
separate  bodies  rather  than  the  same  at  two  stages  of  its 
development.  The  great  change  which  has  come  over 
the  material  part  divides  them  even  less  than  the  dis- 
similarity in  their  organisation.  To-day  the  navy  is 
commanded  by  specially  educated  officers,  and  manned 
by  seamen  who  are  a  strictly  professional  body.  From 
the  Admiral  of  the  Fleet  down  to  the  youngest  boy 
just  sent  from  the  '  St.  Vincent,'  everybody  has  a  well- 
defined  place  to  fill,  a  rigidly  fixed  set  of  duties  to 
perform,  a  career  laid  out  for  him,  and  a  certainty  that 
if  he  '  sticks  to  the  service  '  the  State  will  provide  for 
him,  not  very  generously  perhaps,  but  at  least  surely,  as 
long  as  he  lives.  His  dress  is  cut  and  marked  according 
to  rule,  and  shows  his  exact  rank.  The  ship  he  serves 
in  must  be  painted  in  a  certain  way.  Such  and  such 
kinds  of  furniture  are  allowed,  while  others  are  not. 
The  naval  seaman  of  to-day  lives  in  a  world  severely 
regulated  by  law,  and  his  course  is  marked  out  for  him 
by  a  code  of  some  magnitude.  He  is  no  mere  machine, 
but  he  is  a  part  of  a  great  and  complicated  organi- 
sation. 

In  the  seventeenth  century  all  this  either  did  not 
exist  or  existed  only  in  germ.     There  was  a  fixed  centre 


The  Navy  of  the  Commonwealth         37 

of  administration  at  Whitehall,  and  in  the  dockyards, 
but  outside  of  that  everything  was  unsettled  or  regulated 
only  by  the  custom  of  the  sea.  The  mere  fact  that  no 
uniform  was  selected  for  the  navy  till  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  is  enough  to  show  how  vague  was 
its  organisation.  There  was,  indeed,  no  regular  body 
of  naval  officers  till  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
Some  men  did  spend  their  lives  in  the  navy,  but  even 
they  were  trusted  personal  servants  of  the  King  rather 
than  members  of  a  corps  of  officers.  Until  the  end 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  it  was  not  even  thought 
necessary  that  an  admiral  or  captain  should  be  a  seaman. 
In  very  early  days  the  King's  fleets  were  composed  for 
the  most  part  of  merchantmen  impressed  for  the  war. 
The  master  and  crew  were  taken  with  their  vessel,  and 
it  was  their  duty  to  navigate  her.  The  captain  and  his 
lieutenant  were  officers  in  command  of  soldiers  put  on 
board,  not  to  sail  the  ship,  but  to  fight  her.  This  rough 
and  ready  system  had  begun  to  fall  into  disfavour  with 
good  judges  as  early  as  Elizabeth's  time.  Many,  though 
by  no  means  all  of  her  captains,  were  seamen,  but  the 
old  practice  lived  on  with  the  usual  pertinacity  of  an 
English  custom.  In  face  of  the  glorious  record  of  her 
times,  and  the  triumphs  of  the  navy  of  the  Common- 
wealth, it  is  impossible  to  say  that  the  system  was  wholly 
bad.  No  doubt  a  sensible  landsman  left  his  master  to 
handle  the  ship,  and  confined  himself  to  ordering  where 
he  was  to  take  her.  When  Monk,  in  the  excitement  of 
battle,  forgot  he  was  no  longer  a  colonel  of  cavalry,  and 
roared  out  to  his  crew  the  order  to  wheel  to  the  left,  the 
sailors  laughed,  but  the  master  interpreted  his  meaning 
to  the  man  at  the  helm,  and  the   ship  was  duly  laid 


38  Robert  Blake 

alongside  the  Dutchman.  Still,  a  system  which  left  the 
captain  so  much  at  the  mercy  of  a  subordinate  was  bad, 
and  became  inevitably  worse  in  proportion  as  naval  war- 
fare became  more  a  matter  of  manoeuvring.  Sir  William 
Monson,  the  author  of  the  '  Naval  Tracts,'  and  one  of 
the  last  survivors  of  the  great  Elizabethan  generation, 
had  pointed  out  the  superiority  of  the  seaman  captains 
long  before  Blake's  time.  During  the  Commonwealth  it 
seems  to  have  been  the  rule  to  give  the  command  of 
ships  to  sailors.  In  the  reign  of  Charles  the  ordinary 
establishment  of  a  c  capital '  ship,  a  ship  of  the  line,  was 
a  captain,  a  lieutenant  (though  there  was  no  officer  of 
this  rank  in  the  smaller  class  of  vessels),  a  master,  a 
pilot,  and  a  varying  number  of  master's  mates.  The  pay 
of  a  captain  ranged,  according  to  the  size  of  his  vessel, 
from  4L  6s.  8d.  a  month  to  14L,  to  which  was  added 
some  very  uncertain  perquisites  for  carrying  treasure, 
giving  convoy,  and  so  forth.  A  lieutenant  received  from 
21.  16s.  to  31.  10s.  ;  a  master  from  21.  6s.  Sd.  to 
4L  13s.  9d. ;  a  pilot  from  11.  3s.  4d.  to  21.  5s.,  and  the 
master's  mates  from  11.  3s.  4sd.  to  21.  5s.  a  month.  This 
pay  lasted  only  as  long  as  the  ship  was  in  commission. 
When  once  she  was  paid  off,  officers  and  crew  might 
shift  for  themselves. 

The  navy  was  manned,  as  it  continued  to  be  down 
to  this  century,  by  voluntary  engagement,  largely  tem- 
pered by  the  pressgang.  Men  were  taken  for  the 
commission,  and  paid  at  the  end,  the  wages  of  a 
common  man  being  15s.  a  month,  with  his  rations.  The 
Parliament  raised  their  pay  to  11.  At  the  end  of  the 
century  the  weekly  allowance  of  a  sailor  was  '  seven 
pounds  of  biscuit,  seven  gallons  of  beer,  four  pounds 


The  Navy  of  the  Commonwealth         39 

of  beef,  two  pounds  of  pork,  one  quart  of  peas, 
three  pints  of  oatmeal,  six  ounces  of  butter,  and 
twelve  ounces  of  cheese,  and  besides,  all  the  fresh  fish 
which  is  caught,  without  any  deduction  for  it.'  Rum 
as  yet  was  not,  but  always  providing  the  stores  were 
good,  these  rations  were  amply  sufficient  to  keep  a  man 
in  health  and  strength.  In  the  main,  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  navy  under  Charles  and  the  Common- 
wealth was  honest.  There  were  peculation  and  mis- 
management, but  neither  reached  the  scandalous  height 
they  attained  after  the  Eestoration.  In  one  respect 
the  seaman  of  the  early  seventeenth  century  was  better 
off  than  the  men  who  manned  the  fleets  of  Hawke  and 
Eodney.  The  commissions  were  short.  There  were 
no  foreign  stations.  At  home  the  fleet  was  equipped 
for  the  '  winter  and  summer  guards,'  such  lasting  only 
a  few  months.  As  yet  the  practice  of  paying  off  at 
the  end  of  a  commission  did  not  mean  that  the  crew 
were  kept  waiting  for  years,  imprisoned  on  board  at 
the  mercy  of  money-lending  pursers  who  made  advances 
at  usurious  interest.  Neither  does  the  cat  seem  to  have 
been  used  with  the  freedom  of  later  days.  Punishments 
were  rough.  The  custom  of  the  seas  allowed  of  great 
ferocity  in  the  case  of  such  offences  as  stabbing  and 
robbery,  but  there  were  no  floggings  of  two  and  three 
hundred  lashes  for  small  delinquencies.  In  fact,  in  days 
when  the  Spanish  Main  was  open  to  a  crew  of  adventu- 
rous spirits,  a  captain  might  hesitate  before  indulging 
in  the  kind  of  brutality  which  drove  the  crew  of  the 
'  Hermione '  into  mutiny. 

The    system    of    the    seventeenth   century   was    a 
fairly  good  one  for   the   time.     It  had  to  be  carried 


40  Robert  Blake 

on  into  wholly  different  circumstances  before  it  pro- 
duced the  abuses  which,  in  their  turn,  produced  the 
mutiny  at  Spithead.  The  Commonwealth  was  indeed 
exceptionally  favourable  to  the  seamen.  Its  gen- 
erally vigorous  policy  induced  it  to  promote  the 
general  interests  of  the  country,  and  its  kindness  was 
stimulated  by  purely  selfish  motives.  After  the  mutiny 
in  the  Downs,  the  Parliament  had  need  to  attach  the 
sailors  to  itself  by  good  pay  and  good  treatment. 

To  form  an  idea  of  the  ships  of  that  time  from  any- 
thing which  now  floats  is  almost  impossible.  A  com- 
parison with  a  steamer  would  of  course  be  absurd,  but 
even  the  great  sailing  clippers  of  to-day  are  so  widely 
different  as  to  be  utterly  unlike.  They  are  longer, 
narrower,  simpler  in  form,  and  far  more  elaborately 
rigged.  If  we  wish  to  realise  the  sort  of  vessel  which 
carried  Blake's  flag,  perhaps  the  best  way  would  be  to 
pay  a  visit  to  the  •  Victory '  at  Portsmouth,  and  then  to 
the  model  rooms  at  Greenwich.  The  deck  of  Nelson's 
flagship  looks  small  when  seen  from  the  poop,  and  the 
{  George  '  would  have  looked  far  smaller.  She  was  even 
broader  in  proportion  to  her  length,  and  built  higher 
out  of  the  water.  Few  of  the  ships  of  the  navy  in  1648 
were  of  over  a  thousand  tons.  These  comparatively 
small  vessels  were  more  imposing  than  they  would  seem 
likely  to  have  been  from  their  mere  size.  Look  at  the 
model  of  the  c  Eoyal  Sovereign '  (Mr.  Peter  Pett's  great 
ship)  at  Greenwich,  or  at  the  i  Bristol '  of  50  guns, 
which  lived  to  be  taken  by  Duguay-Trouin,  or  at  the 
nameless  50-gun  ship  built  in  1650.  The  stern  towers 
up,  broad  at  the  water  line  and  narrow  above.  Here 
there  is  a  thin  strip  of  deck  from  side  to  side.     Prom 


The  Navy  of  the  Commonwealth         41 

below  this  runs  out  another  deck,  with  a  slight  down- 
ward slope,  which  ends  before  the  mizen  mast.  This 
is  the  poop.  Prom  under  this  again  comes  out  another, 
which  ends  just  before  the  main,  and  is  known  as  the 
quarter-deck.  Standing  on  the  edge  of  this,  one  would 
look  down  on  what,  with  some  apparent  absurdity,  is 
called  the  upper  deck,  because  it  was  the  highest  of  all 
which  ran  the  whole  length  of  the  vessel.  Under  this 
was  the  main  deck,  which  in  the  case  of  the  great  ships 
carried  guns.  From  either  side  of  the  quarter-deck  two 
narrow  gangways  ran  forward,  and  ended  in  the  fore- 
castle. This  was  then  exactly  what  its  name  implies — a 
solid  square  fort  rising  from  the  level  of  the  upper  deck, 
rather  higher  than  the  poop,  carrying  guns,  and  capable 
of  being  defended  even  if  the  rest  of  the  ship  was  in 
possession  of  an  enemy.  These  vessels  were  armed 
with  from  thirty-six  to  seventy  guns,  ranging  from  six 
to  forty-eight  pounders.  The  English  ordnance  of  that 
time  was  famous  for  its  excellence,  which  may  have  had 
something  to  do  with  inducing  the  Admiralty  to  over- 
gun  their  ships,  to  the  ruin  of  their  sailing  powers.  It 
is  also  to  be  noted  that  the  English  men-of-war  of  the 
seventeenth  century  were  the  best  built  vessels  of  their 
time.  They  were  stronger  than  the  Dutch,  in  which 
timber  was  spared  from  motives  of  economy,  and  they 
drew  more  water.  The  mediaeval  love  of  adorning 
weapons  and  ships  still  survived.  Our  war  vessels,  and 
those  of  other  nations,  were  elaborately  ornamented. 
Mr.  Pett  covered  the  stern,  sides,  and  bows  of  his  '  Royal 
Sovereign '  with  graven  images  of  Neptune,  Father 
Thames,  the  Genius  of  England,  Valour,  Fortitude,  and 
His  Sacred  Majesty.     She  was  a  show  ship,  but  even 


42  Robert  Blake 

smaller  vessels  were  covered  with  wood  carving,  and  had 
gilded  laurel  wreaths  round  the  upper  ports.  The  rigging 
had  just  reached  a  stage  short  of  its  complete  develop- 
ment. Three-masted  vessels  carried  courses,  topsails, 
and  topgallant  sails.  The  place  of  the  spanker  on  the 
mizen  was  occupied  by  a  lateen  sail,  and  the  bowsprit, 
which  rose  from  under  the  front  side  of  the  forecastle 
at  a  sharp  angle,  had  a  small  mast  stepped  at  the  end, 
carrying  a  square  sail  known  as  the  sprit. 

1  The  seamen  are  in  a  manner  a  nation  by  them- 
selves, a  humorous,  brave,  and  sturdy  people;  fierce 
and  resolute  in  whatsoever  they  are  inclined  to,  some- 
what  unsteady  and  inconstant  in  pursuing  it,  and  jealous 
of  those  to-morrow  by  whom  they  are  governed  to-day.' 
Clarendon's  well-known  description  has  been  true  of 
the  sailor  from  Chaucer's  time  to  Marryat's.  In  the 
early  seventeenth  century,  the  crews  which  manned 
our  ships  had  need  to  be  brave  and  sturdy,  fierce  and 
resolute,  for  they  were  a  nation  which  was  always  at 
war.  The  reigns  of  James  and  Charles  are  commonly 
dismissed  as  a  barren  period  in  the  history  of  the  navy, 
and  not  unjustly.  The  expeditions  of  these  sovereigns 
were  all  unfortunate,  and  the  attack  on  Cadiz  in  1626 
was  disgraced  by  mutiny,  and  even  by  cowardice.  Still 
both  did  much  to  increase  the  strength  of  the  navy. 
They  even  did  something  for  the  training  of  the  men 
by  fitting  out  fleets,  though  little  use  was  made  of  them 
when  at  sea.  The  dockyards  and  the  Admiralty  must 
at  least  have  been  well  practised  in  their  duties.  Officers 
and  men  must  have  learnt  something  during  these 
cruises. 

It  was  not,  however,  in  the  Royal  navy  that  the  sea- 


The  Navy  of  the  Commonwealth        43 

men  who  conquered  the  fleets  of  Holland  were  trained, 
but  on  board  the  merchant  ships  which  made  the  over- 
sea voyages.  In  our  times  a  South  Sea  chief  cannot 
pillage  a  boat's  crew  without  bringing  upon  himself 
the  visit  of  a  cruiser,  but  in  the  seventeenth  century 
traders  had  to  depend  on  themselves  for  protection. 
They  went  i  upon  the  sea  on  their  lawful  occasions,'  with 
the  distinct  understanding  that  they  had  little  or  no 
assistance  to  expect  from  their  Government.  There  was 
no  peace  on  the  sea. 

Very  early  in  James's  reign  the  Earl  of  Salisbury 
asked  a  deputation  of  merchants  who  came  to  complain 
of  the  outrageous  violence  of  a  Spanish  Viceroy  of 
Sicily,  whether  they  really  expected  the  King  to  go 
to  war  whenever  one  of  their  ships  was  pillaged  in  the 
Levant.  The  merchants  acknowledged  that  it  would 
be  an  absurd  pretension.  All  they  asked  was  that 
the  King  would  do  his  best  for  them  by  expostula- 
tion and  bargain.  For  the  rest  they  agreed  that 
Englishmen  who  went  far  abroad  for  gain  did  so  at 
their  risk  and  peril.  The  adventurer  had  not  far  to  go 
to  meet  enemies.  Even  the  narrow  seas,  over  which 
the  King  of  England  claimed  sovereignty,  swarmed  with 
pirates.  The  privateers  of  Dunkerque  who  sailed  under 
the  flag  of  Spain  against  the  trade  of  Holland  were 
ready  enough  to  overstep  their  commissions.  Gentle- 
men of  all  nations  who  were  in  trouble  took  to  the  sea, 
as  they  took  in  after  days  to  the  road.  '  Qui  disait  marin 
disait  forban,'  as  Admiral  Paris  puts  it,  and  not  only 
privateers,  but  even  merchantmen  were  not  scrupulous 
about  turning  pirate.  Piracy  was  a  business.  The 
Earl  of  Warwick,  afterwards  the  Parliament's  Admiral 


44  Robert  Blake 

in  the  Civil  War,  did  a  large  speculation  in  vessels  which 
were  called  privateers,  but  which  plundered  all  traders 
impartially  under  the  flag  of  any  obscure  potentate 
who  happened  to  be  at  war.  When  the  narrow  seas 
were  left,  the  skipper  knew  he  was  sailing  into  the 
cruising  grounds  of  other  foes.  In  America,  the  coasts 
of  New  England  and  Virginia  might  be  safe,  but  the 
long  fight  with  France  had  begun  to  the  north,  and  to 
the  south  were  the  possessions  of  Spain.  The  foreigner 
who  sailed  to  the  west  of  Pope  Alexander's  line,  to  take 
his  share  of  the  lucrative  contraband  trade,  went  with 
a  sample  of  woollen  goods  in  one  hand  and  a  boarding 
pike  in  the  other.  From  armed  smuggler  to  buccaneer 
was  a  short  step,  as  may  be  seen  from  Dampier's 
history  of  the  '  Cygnet '  of  London.  The  Sallee  rovers 
lay  in  wait  outside  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar.  Within 
the  Mediterranean  was  the  great  pirate  stronghold  of 
Algiers.  Adventurers  of  all  nations  sailed  from  it  to 
plunder  indiscriminately.  Two  Englishmen  at  least,  a 
deserter  named  Ward,  and  a  gentleman  of  the  ancient 
house  of  Verney,  were  famous  among  these  sea-robbers. 
Verney  came  home,  and  was  thought  rather  to  have 
shown  himself  a  credit  to  his  family.  The  Murad 
Reis  who  sacked  Baltimore  in  Ireland — for  the  Algerines 
cruised  openly  on  the  ocean — was  a  Fleming.  Beyond 
Algiers  were  Tunis  and  Tripoli.  The  ships  of  the  East 
India  Company  had  to  expect  the  armed  opposition  of 
Portuguese  or  Dutchmen  on  the  coast  of  Coromandel 
or  Malabar  and  among  the  Spice  Islands.  Factors  and 
skippers  of  the  three  nations  fought  and  made  alliances, 
in  complete  indifference  as  to  whether  their  countries 
were  at  war,  or   not,  in  Europe.     Then,  too,  there  were 


The  Navy  of  the  Commonwealth        45 

native  princes  or  Turkish  pashas  who  would  plunder  if 
they  could. 

With  so  many  foes  waiting  to  pounce  on  him,  the 
sailor  had  need  to  go  armed,  and  to  be  prepared  to 
stand  on  his  defence.  Accordingly  the  ships  employed 
in  the  Indian,  American,  and  Levant  voyages  were  well 
supplied  with  guns  and  carried  large  crews.  They 
had  their  gunners  and  armourers,  and  the  crews  were 
drilled  at  quarters.  Often  enough  they  were  over- 
powered, and  all  who  escaped  death  were  swept  into 
captivity. 

The  Privy  Council  received  every  year  a  long  list  of 
piteous  complaints  and  appeals  from  unfortunate  men 
who  were  in  the  bagnios  of  Algiers.  The  charitable 
were  periodically  called  on  to  subscribe  for  the  ransom 
of  captives.  Nor  was  Algiers  the  only  or  even  the 
worst  place  of  imprisonment  to  which  his  ill-luck  might 
lead  the  sailor.  The  fate  of  Captain  Nathaniel  Court- 
hope  and  of  the  factors  at  Amboyna  shows  that 
the  Dutch  of  the  Spice  Islands  could  be  as  ferocious 
as  the  renegades  of  the  Mediterranean.  Even  when 
Spain  was  most  anxious  to  be  on  good  terms  with  the 
King  of  England,  the  Inquisition  seized  every  chance 
of  laying  its  hands  on  heretics.  Still,  in  defiance  of 
death,  wounds,  and  imprisonment,  English  sailors  rushed 
into  every  trade  with  such  success,  that  the  commerce  of 
the  country  increased  very  greatly  between  the  death 
of  Elizabeth  and  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War.  Being 
left  almost  without  protection  by  the  Royal  fleet,  they 
protected  themselves.  They  were  rarely  taken  without 
a  fight,  and  in  many  cases  they  resisted  with  success. 
Accounts  of  these   feats  were   published,  and   one,  a 


46  Robert  Blake 

particularly  good  specimen  of  its  kind,  was  dedicated 
to  Prince  Henry,  and  rhymed  by  Taylor,  the  Water 
Poet.  It  tells  how  in  1616  the  c  Dolphin'  of  London 
beat  off  a  little  squadron  of  Algerines  on  the  coast  of 
Sardinia.  The  pirates  surrounded  and  boarded  her. 
At  their  head  were  two  English  renegades.  The  pirates 
were  in  overwhelming  force,  but  they  attacked  in  detail, 
and  were  repulsed  one  after  another.  At  last,  when 
two  of  their  vessels  had  been  well  riddled  by  the 
'  Dolphin's  '  guns,  when  the  valiant  merchant  ship  was 
on  fire,  but  her  crew  still  resisted,  l  choosing  rather  to 
die  than  yield,  as  it  is  still  the  nature  and  condition 
of  all  Englishmen,'  the  Algerines  drew  off.  The  '  Dol- 
phin's '  '  boatswain  (seeing  them  fly)  most  undauntedly 
with  a  whistle  dared  them  to  the  skirmish  if  so  they 
durst.'  But  they  durst  not,  and  the  '  Dolphin,'  badly 
cut  up  as  she  was,  crawled  into  safety  under  the 
Sardinian  batteries.  In  the  East  Indies  the  fight- 
ing was  incessant  and  merciless.  Sir  Henry  Middleton 
blockaded  Aden  in  revenge  for  some  violent  proceedings 
of  the  pasha's.  A  squadron  of  the  Company's  ships 
helped  Shah  Abbas  of  Persia  to  take  Ormuz  from  the 
Portuguese,  who  were  our  obstinate  enemies  in  those 
regions.  The  history  of  the  Company's  first  voyages  is 
full  of  accounts  of  actions  with  the  fleets  of  this  power, 
in  which  no  quarter  was  given.  Later  on,  when  Por- 
tugal had  ceased  to  be  formidable,  began  the  long 
quarrel  with  Holland,  which  was  equally  furious  but 
less  successful. 

All  this  was  very  irregular,  undoubtedly,  but  it  was 
capital  training.  It  familiarised  men  with  war,  and 
accustomed  them  to  submit  to  discipline.     The  crews 


The  Navy  of  the  Commonwealth        47 

of  the  '  Dolphin  '  and  of  the  Indiamen  must  have  had 
the  root  of  the  matter  in  them.  It  was  well  that  they 
should,  for  they  had  long  scores  to  clear  off  with  Por- 
tuguese, Spaniards,  and  Dutchmen.  Under  a  resolute 
Government  and  vigorous  leaders,  they  were  about  to 
have  an  opportunity  to  fight  out  what  was  peculiarly 
their  quarrel. 


48  Robert  Blake 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE   PURSUIT   OF   RUPERT. 

Blake's  first  naval  services  were  against  a  domestic 
enemy.  It  fell  to  him  to  crush  the  feeble  remnants  of 
the  Koyalist  party.  After  the  fall  of  Colchester  and 
the  defeat  of  the  Duke  of  Hamilton  at  Preston,  the 
King's  followers  were  completely  conquered  in  England, 
but  though  driven  from  the  mainland,  they  still  con- 
tinued to  fight  on  the  sea.  Carteret  and  Greenvil  held 
Jersey  and  the  Scilly  Islands.  From  their  ports  cruisers 
sailed  to  prey  on  the  commerce  of  the  rebels,  that  is  to 
say,  of  all  England.  In  the  ports  of  Holland  Prince 
Rupert  commanded  a  remnant  of  the  squadron  which 
had  revolted  against  the  Parliament  in  the  previous 
year.  Most  of  the  ships,  and  a  large  majority  of  the 
men,  had  been  induced  to  return  to  their  duty,  or  to 
fall  back  into  their  treason  (either  phrase  can  be  used 
according  to  the  point  of  view)  by  the  Earl  of  Warwick. 
Three  large  vessels,  the  '  Convertine,'  the  '  Antelope,' 
the  '  Swallow,5  and  four  frigates  remained  in  the  hands 
of  the  King's  friends.  After  much  wrangling  between 
the  Duke  of  York,  who  was  nominally  Lord  High 
Admiral,  and  the  Prince  of  Wales  or  the  Prince's 
servants ;   after  fights  among  themselves,  futile  efforts 


The  Pursuit  of  Rupert  49 

to  help  the  imprisoned  King,  riots  in  Helvoet  Sluys 
with  the  Dutch,  and  spurts  of  fighting  with  the  Parlia- 
ment's blockading  squadron,  a  compromise  had  been 
arrived  at  by  the  divided  Royalists.  The  poor  remnant 
of  the  squadron  which  was  to  have  reconquered  England 
was  put  under  the  command  of  Prince  Rupert,  to  be 
used  for  the  King's  service,  with  a  reservation  of  the 
Duke  of  York's  rights  as  Lord  High  Admiral.  Only 
one  use  could  be  made  of  this  force.  Even  the  most 
sanguine  of  the  Royalist  refugees  could  not  hope  to 
produce  any  impression  on  the  power  of  the  Parliament 
with  three  '  capital  ships '  and  four  small  cruisers,  manned 
by  broken  men  and  indifferently  equipped  by  expedients 
of  every  kind.  If  this  squadron  could  not  do  anything 
else,  however,  it  could  plunder,  and  its  prizes  could  be 
sold  for  the  benefit  of  the  exiled  Court.  The  monarchical 
governments  of  the  Continent  were  not  as  yet  sufficiently 
afraid  of  the  Commonwealth  to  refuse  Charles  the  use 
of  their  ports.  With  a  folly  scarcely  to  be  justified  by 
their  extreme  penury,  Charles  and  his  advisers  decided 
to  offend  the  whole  trading  community  of  England  by 
putting  themselves  on  a  level  with  the  pirates  of  Algiers. 
Their  enterprise  was  delayed  for  a  time  by  the  very 
penury  it  was  designed  to  relieve.  The  squadron  was 
to  make  money,  but  money  was  needed  to  equip  the 
squadron.  Prince  Rupert  got  over  this  difficulty  in  a 
masterly  manner.  He  sold  the  guns  of  the  '  Antelope,' 
and  fitted  out  two  of  his  frigates  with  the  .  proceeds. 
These  cruisers,  the  c  Guinea '  frigate,  of  300  tons  and 
thirty  guns,  under  Captain  Allen  (one  of  Charles's 
admirals  after  the  Restoration)  and  the  c  Roebuck,'  of 
120  tons  and  fourteen  guns,  Captain  Marshall,   sailed 

E 


50  Robert  Blake 

from  Helvoet  Sluys.  In  a  few  days  they  returned  with 
a  collier  valued  at  800L,  and  a  Yarmouth  ship.  With 
these  firstfruits  of  their  industry  the  Eoyalist  officers 
equipped  the  other  ships,  and  in  January  of  1649  Rupert 
stood  to  sea  with  his  seven  vessels  and  the  prize.  His 
first  stroke  of  business  was  innocent  enough.  He  gave 
convoy  down  the  Channel  to  some  Dutch  merchant- 
men, and  then  steered  for  Kinsale,  where  the  King's 
flag  was  still  flying.  From  that  time  till  the  end  of 
his  wild  cruise,  his  friends  heard  little  from  Rupert  the 
Devil,  as  his  sister  Sophia  calls  him  in  a  letter  intercepted 
by  the  Parliament. 

The  loud  outcries  of  the  merchants  would  soon  have 
forced  the  Parliament  to  take  active  measures  against 
Rupert,  even  if  a  regard  for  its  own  interests  had  not 
been  enough  to  drive  it  into  vigorous  exertions.  Some 
time  had  to  pass,  however,  before  a  sufficient  squadron 
could  be  got  ready  for  sea.  The  mutiny  of  the  previous 
summer  had  greatly  disorganised  the  service,  and  the 
rapid  changes  of  the  second  civil  war  had  thrown  the 
whole  government  out  of  gear.  In  1649  the  Parliament 
had  to  begin  by  establishing  a  naval  administration. 
An  Admiralty  Committee,  of  which  Sir  Harry  Vane 
was  the  ablest  and  the  most  industrious  member,  was 
formed  to  work  under  the  Council  of  State.  In  keeping 
with  its  general  practice,  the  Parliament  seems  to  have 
attempted  to  put  even  the  fleet  at  sea  under  the 
command  of  a  committee.  Popham,  Blake,  and  Deane 
were  expected  to  act  together,  and  even  to  sail  in  the 
same  ship.  The  necessities  of  the  service  made  it  im- 
possible for  all  three  to  keep  together,  but  throughout 
1649   Blake  is  found   acting  either  with  Popham  or 


The  Pursuit  of  Rupert  51 

with  Dearie.  Their  commission,  issued  in  February, 
was  in  the  widest  terms,  and  was  accompanied  by- 
instructions  worded  with  all  the  vigour  and  precision 
which  distinguished  the  orders  of  the  Council  of  State 
when  the  work  in  hand  was  the  suppression  of  the 
Eoyalists.  They  were  told,  with  much  official  detail, 
to  go  anywhere  and  do  anything  they  might  find 
necessary  '  to  oppose  and  suppress  whoever  maintains 
the  title  of  Charles  Stuart,  eldest  son  to  the  late  King, 
or  any  of  his  issue  claiming  a  title  to  the  Crown.' 

The  first  thing  to  be  done  was  to  take  measures  of 
precaution  against  another  mutiny.  On  March  3  the 
Admirals  had  orders  to  prepare  a  '  form  of  engagement ' 
to  bind  the  officers  and  mariners  to  6  this  Parliament,' 
and  the  support  of  a  Government  without  King  or 
House  of  Lords.  Then  came  the  long  business  of  fit- 
ting the  squadron  for  sea.  Two  months  were  spent  in 
this  task,  during  which  time  Blake  and  Deane  were 
continually  writing  to  the  Admiralty  Committee  for 
cases  of  pistols,  hatchets,  cables,  anchors,  flags,  or  men. 
In  the  middle  of  all  this  official  correspondence  is  one 
letter  which  may  be  said  to  be,  by  comparison,  personal 
and  interesting.  On  April  3  the  Admirals  inform  the 
Committee  that  Colonel  Blake,  as  he  was  still  called, 
had  sent  to  Lyme  for  Bich.  Squire,  Jonathan  Book, 
and  Jas.  Belsor  to  join  their  flagship,  the  i  Triumph.' 
It  is  hardly  a  guess  that  these  were  men  known  to 
Blake  in  the  old  days  of  the  siege  as  tall  fellows  and 
good  men  of  their  hands,  such  as  an  officer  in  need  of 
stout  and  trustworthy  followers  would  like  to  have  by 
him  in  trying  times.  By  the  middle  of  April  the  fleet 
was  in  the  Downs,  and  in  May  it  was  iu  Plymouth 

b  2 


52  Robert  Blake 

Sound.  Blake,  who  was  a  loyal  Bridge  water  man,  and 
who  always  bought  his  own  stores  in  his  native  town, 
vvould  get  his  favourite  Somersetshire  bread  and  cheese 
and  beer  very  conveniently  at  Plymouth. 

During  the  summer  of  1649  Blake  and  Deane  were 
engaged  in  the  dreary  work  of  blockading  on  the  Irish 
coast.  The  diaries  of  Sir  William  Penn,  who  saw  much 
of  that  service,  can  still  be  read,  and  they  are  a  speak- 
ing testimony  to  the  tedium  of  this,  the  most  wearisome 
part  of  the  languid  Irish  wars.  Rupert  kept  his  ships 
carefully  in  Kinsale  harbour,  not  having  '  devil '  enough 
in  him  to  try  the  frantic  adventure  of  attacking  the 
strong  and  well-appointed  Parliamentary  squadron  at 
sea.  He  had  his  troubles,  but  they  came  mainly  from  the 
land.  The  crews  of  the  King's  ships  grew  discontented 
with  idleness  and  want  of  pay.  Worse  than  the  mutinous 
conduct  of  his  own  men  was  the  downfall  of  the  Royal 
cause  in  Ireland.  The  victory  of  Michael  Jones  outside 
of  Dublin,  and  Cromwell's  dreadful  march,  made  it  clear 
that  Kinsale  would  not  long  be  tenable.  With  falling 
fortunes  came  their  usual  consequence  in  Ireland, 
treason  and  divisions.  Rupert  found,  or  professed  to 
find,  that  he  could  not  trust  the  officer  in  charge  of  the 
fort  at  Kinsale.  He  therefore  seized  it  himself.  The 
fort  would  have  stood  him  in  little  stead  if  Cromwell 
had  come  down  on  Kinsale  while  Blake  and  Deane  were 
off  the  port.  Bad  weather  came  to  his  assistance.  The 
autumn  storms  compelled  the  Parliamentary  officers  to 
withdraw  from  the  dangerous  coast,  and  Rupert  slipped 
out  with  his  seven  ships.  It  would  have  been  too  rash 
to  make  for  the  Channel  Islands,  though  Carteret  still 
held  them  for  the  King,  and  the  Prince  accordingly 


T he  Pursuit  of  Rupert  53 

sailed  for  the  coast  of  Portugal.  In  November  he 
reached  Lisbon,  a  fatal  guest,  bringing  with  him  several 
English  prizes  captured  off  the  Berlings  by  his  brother 
Maurice. 

Blake's  services  during  this  summer  can  only  be 
guessed  at.  A  blockade  has  but  a  colourless  history, 
In  November  a  letter  from  Deane  reports  that  '  my 
partner  Blake '  is  on  the  coast  of  Munster,  with  the 
*  Guinea  •  frigate  and  the  '  Nonsuch.'  He  must  have 
maintained  his  reputation  if  he  did  not  increase  it,  for 
in  the  course  of  October  he  received  an  offer  from  one 
who  well  knew  how  to  choose  men  for  command.  By 
a  Parliamentary  order  in  that  month,  he  was,  '  at  the 
instance  of  the  Lord  General  of  Ireland,'  Oliver  Crom- 
well, offered  the  choice  of  keeping  his  sea  command  or 
taking  a  Major  Generalship  on  shore.  If  he  selected 
the  latter  post  he  was  to  have  help  in  raising  a  regi- 
ment. The  offer  was  either  declined  or  recalled,  for 
Parliament  soon  had  need  for  his  services  on  blue  water. 
The  news  of  Kupert's  presence  on  the  coast  of  Portugal 
induced  the  Council  of  State  to  fit  out  a  fleet  for  the 
south,  and  Blake  was  chosen  for  the  command  in 
December  of  1649.  Popham  being  needed  in  the 
Channel,  and  Deane  being  ill,  he  was  to  go  alone. 

Another  period  of  preparation  preceded  the  next  cam- 
paign. During  the  last  month  of  1649  and  the  first  of 
1650,  Blake  was  hard  at  work  fitting  his  squadron  for 
sea.  The  rendezvous  was  in  Stokes  Bay,  where  he  met 
Popham,  who  was  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  Channel,  and  the 
two  rapidly  settled  the  details  of  the  service.  In  the 
previous  summer,  the  Council  of  State  had  been  some- 
what doubtful  as  to  its  power  of  keeping  up  a  strong 


54  Robert  Blake 

naval  force  for  long,  and  had  been  urgent  on  the 
admirals  to  do  something  towards  c  breaking  the  head 
and  pulling  up  the  roots  of  the  enemy's  marine  strength 
in  Prince  Rupert.'  These  doubts  had  disappeared  by 
the  end  of  the  year.  New  ships  had  been  equipped,  and 
armed  merchantmen  had  been  levied  in  some  numbers. 
In  March  1650  the  Parliament  had  forty-seven  war- 
ships and  twenty  hired  merchant  ships  in  commission, 
over  and  above  the  seventeen  war-ships  and  two  fire- 
ships  or  ketches  blockading  Lisbon.  By  the  middle  of 
February  Blake  was  on  his  way  south,  and  it  was  well 
known  that  he  was  commissioned  for  determined  service. 
A  Royal  agent  in  England,  whose  letter  was  inter- 
cepted, reports  on  February  20  that  Blake  is  at  sea 
with  fourteen  ships,  and  will  '  renew  the  business  of 
Helvoet  Sluys  in  any  prince's  harbour.'  c  The  business 
of  Helvoet  Sluys '  was  Warwick's  attempt  to  destroy 
the  mutinous  squadron  of  1648  in  Dutch  waters — a  very 
high-handed  proceeding.  The  Royalist  spy  was  only 
repeating  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  when  he  in- 
formed his  friends  that  the  Parliamentary  officer  was 
ordered  to  strike  hard,  not  only  at  Rupert,  but  at  any 
power  which  allowed  him  to  use  its  harbours.  On 
January  7  the  Council  of  State  had  issued  '  additional 
instructions  for  the  generals  of  the  fleet  for  the  southern 
expedition.'  Nothing  could  be  more  explicit.  '  Now/ 
so  ran  the  peremptory  words,  c  this  present  fleet  is  sent 
forth  for  the  intents  following — viz.  the  suppressing  of 
pirates,  advantage  of  trade,  encouraging  of  merchants, 
and  securing  their  shipping  at  sea  ;  also  to  pursue, 
seize,  scatter,  fight  with,  or  destroy  all  the  ships  of  the 
revolted  fleet.'     Sink,  drown,  and  destroy,  is  the  burden 


The  Pursuit  of  Rupert  55 

of  the  whole  despatch.     No  doubt  was  left  as  to  the 
course  to  be  followed  with  foreigners  guilty  of  too  much 
friendship  for  Rupert.     They  were  to  be  '  sunk,  burnt, 
and  destroyed,'  but,  and  the  qualification  throws  some 
light  on  the  nature  of  naval  warfare    in  those  times, 
they  were  not  to  be  killed  in  cold  blood.     For  the  rest, 
the  Parliament  claimed  to  have  inherited  all  the  rights 
of  the  King  of  England.     Blake  was  ordered  to  insist 
on  the  salute  due  to  the  sovereigns  of  the  seas.     He  was 
to  call  on  all  foreign  ships  to   lower  their  topsails  to 
the  flag  of  England,  always  providing  he  was   strong 
enough  to  enforce  obedience.     If  not,  he  might  pass 
over  the  offence,  but  was  to  report  the  names  of  the 
contumacious  foreigners  to  the  Council  of  State,  so  that 
they   might  be   brought  thereunto  '  on  a  more  fitting 
occasion.'     The  Commonwealth,  though  it  did  not  ask 
its  officers  to  try  the  impossible,  was  not  one  of  those 
Governments  which  decline  to  take  responsibility.     On 
April  13  the  Admiralty  Committee  writes  more  '  further 
instructions  '  to  Blake,  putting  its  views  as  to  the  course 
to  be  taken  with  the  King  of  Portugal  beyond  all  ques- 
tion of  a  doubt.     He  was  ordered  to  give  his  Faithful 
Majesty  to  understand  that  no  right  of  asylum  would 
be  recognised  in  his  waters  as  far  as  Rupert  was  con- 
cerned.    The  Admiralty  Committee  quoted  '  Puffendorf 
and  Grotius '  to  show  that  the  Prince  and  his  squadron 
were   not    capable    of    neutrality.       c  Quod   pirataa    et 
lat rones  qui  civitatem  non  faciunt  jure  gentium  jussi 
non  possunt,'  and  seeing  that  they  were  '  hostes  humani 
generis '  were  to  be  knocked  on  the  head,  and  properly 
rooted  out  wherever  found.     If  any  foreign  prince  chose 
to  protect  such  fellows,  he  did  it  at  his  peril. 


56  RoBEkT  Blake 

In  the  first  days  of  March,  if  not  in  the  last  days  of 
February,  Blake  reached  his  cruising  ground  off  Lisbon, 
and  here  he  remained  until  the  end  of  the  year. 
During  this  period  he  had  abundant  opportunity  of 
showing  not  only  his  vigilance,  but  that  readiness  to 
strike  on  provocation  which  Nelson  called  political 
courage.  The  pursuit  of  Eupert  grew  rapidly  into  an 
informal  war  with  Portugal.  This  war  sprang  almost 
inevitably  out  of  the  very  complicated  relations  of  all 
the  parties  to  the  quarrel.  The  position  of  the  Portu- 
guese king  was  indeed  difficult.  John  of  Braganza, 
the  representative  of  an  illegitimate  branch  of  the  house 
of  Avis,  had  been  as  it  were  forced  on  to  the  throne  of 
Portugal  by  the  ambition  of  his  wife,  who  had  compelled 
him  ten  years  before  to  have  the  courage  to  profit  by 
the  revolt  against  Spain.  He  was  a  narrow-minded 
and  timid  man,  very  ill  fitted  for  a  place  requiring  both 
nerve  and  judgment.  Spain  had  not  yet  recognised  the 
independence  of  Portugal,  and  was  known  to  be  pre- 
paring for  an  attempt  to  enforce  its  rights  to  preserve 
the  monarchy  left  by  Philip  II.  Feeble  as  Spain  was, 
it  was  still  stronger  than  Portugal.  As  yet,  John  of 
Braganza  had  no  ally.  When  therefore  he  became 
suddenly  entangled  in  the  civil  strife  of  Englishmen,  it 
behoved  him  to  look  warily  to  his  going,  lest  he  should 
find  that  he  had  offended  the  stronger  side,  and  so 
brought  upon  himself  the  hostility  of  a  State  which 
could  give  very  material  help  to  Spain.  In  November 
1649,  when  Rupert's  ships  entered  the  Tagus,  it  was 
not  yet  certain  that  the  Parliament  would  be  ultimately 
victorious.  The  crowning  mercy  of  Worcester  had  not 
settled  that  question.     John  might  therefore  naturally 


The  Pursuit  of  Rupert  57 

wish  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  the  Stuarts.  His 
sympathies,  too,  would  carry  him  in  that  direction. 
Clfough  the  chief  of  a  rebellion  he  claimed  to  represent 
the  indefeasible  rights  of  a  royal  line,  and  the  execution 
of  Charles  I.  must  have  seemed  as  horrible  a  piece  of 
wickedness  to  him  as  to  the  most  firmly  established 
sovereign  on  the  Continent.  Charles  II.  was  in  his  eyes 
already  the  true  sovereign  of  England.  Moreover,  when 
the  Eoyal  squadron  appeared  off  the  Tagus  in  November 
1649,  there  seemed  reason  to  believe  that  it  might  be 
found  useful.  The  Parliament  was  known  to  be  sending 
envoys  to  Spain,  and  it  was  natural  for  John  to  see  in 
this  an  attempt  to  secure  an  alliance  with  his  worst 
enemy.  He  might  well  suspect  the  rebellious  Parlia- 
ment of  a  wish  to  secure  recognition  from  an  old  State 
by  helping  in  his  ruin.  Finally,  and  this  cannot  have 
been  the  weakest  of  the  motives  which  influenced  him, 
the  Parliament's  ships  were  far  away,  with  enemies  at 
home  still  unsubdued.  The  Royalist  squadron  was  off 
his  port,  with  prizes  to  be  sold,  its  wants  urging  it  on, 
its  matches  burning,  and  a  leader  with  a  well-established 
reputation  for  want  of  scruple  at  its  head.  If  a  refuge 
was  refused,  it  might  very  possibly  avenge  itself  by 
plundering  Portuguese  commerce,  under  the  pretext 
that  Portugal  had  become  the  ally  of  the  Common- 
wealth. 

In  an  evil  hour  for  himself,  John  of  Braganza  opened 
his  harbour  and  arsenal  to  the  refugees  from  Kinsale. 
Rupert  was  able  to  sell  his  prizes,  and  divide  the  pro- 
ceeds between  his  master  in  Holland  and  the  refitting 
of  his  squadron.  Before  it  was  ready,  Blake's  sails  were 
seen  from   Peniche,  and  the  King  of  Portugal   found 


58  Robert  Blake 

himself  between  the  devil  and  the  deep  sea.  The 
Parliamentary  officer  insisted  at  once  on  the  surrender 
of  Rupert's  ships,  and  on  his  own  right  to  enter  the 
Tagus.  The  King  refused  both  requests.  He  could 
not  submit  to  the  ignominy  of  giving  up  his  guests  to 
be  treated  as  pirates,  while  to  have  admitted  Blake 
would  have  simply  been  to  invite  a  repetition  of  the 
business  of  Helvoet  Sluys.  The  actions  of  Tunis  and 
Santa  Cruz  show  how  ready  Blake  was  to  attack  fortifi- 
cations where  there  was  any  possibility  of  success,  and 
if  the  thing  had  been  feasible  he  would  doubtless  have 
shown  the  King  of  Portugal  by  diplomatic  blows  and 
knocks  that  l  piratse  et  latrones '  are  not  capable  of  neu- 
trality ;  but,  like  Drake  at  an  earlier  period,  he  considered 
an  attempt  to  force  the  heavily  fortified  entrance  of  so 
swift  a  river  as  the  Tagus  too  rash.  He  therefore 
anchored  outside. 

A  war  of  stratagems  now  began  between  the  two 
squadrons  which  lay  within  sight  of  one  another.  In  the 
intervals  of  sending  long  documents  to  the  King  to  prove 
one  another  pirates  and  enemies  of  the  human  race,  the  two 
Admirals  made  such  attacks  on  each  other  as  their  con- 
fined positions  allowed.  Parliamentary  officers  per- 
suaded Eupert's  men  to  desert.  Royalist  officers 
attacked  Blake's  boats  when  they  came  on  shore  for 
water.  Eupert  accused  Blake  of  laying  a  plot  to  kidnap 
him,  and  retaliated  by  trying  to  blow  up  his  flagship. 
A  primitive  but  undoubted  torpedo,  made  of  a  c  bomb 
ball  in  a  double-headed  barrel  with  a  lock  in  the  bowels 
to  give  fire  to  a  quick  match '  was  to  be  taken  alongside 
the  '  George '  in  a  fruit  boat  by  a  sailor  in  a  Portuguese 
dress.     The  hasty  use  of  an  English  word,  we  can  guess 


The  Pursuit  of  Rupert  59 

what  it  was,  by  the  travestied  Englishman  excited  sus- 
picion, and  the  infernal  machine  was  seized.  During  all 
this  time  the  King  of  Portugal  sat  by  in  feeble  impo- 
tence, and  was  assailed  by  both  sides  with  arguments 
and  threats.  Each  of  the  foreigners  too  had  his  party 
in  the  Portuguese  court.  The  Queen  supported  Rupert ; 
a  body  of  his  wiser  courtiers,  who  had  begun  to  see 
where  the  balance  of  strength  lay,  were  eager  to  have 
peace  made  with  the  Commonwealth.  They  would  have 
sent  Rupert  to  Execution  Dock  with  the  utmost 
equanimity. 

The  King,  surrounded  by  factions  and  without  fleet 
or  money,  had  no  power  to  exact  respect  from  either  of 
the  strangers  who  had  come  to  fight  their  quarrels  out 
in  his  waters.  The  most  he  could  do  was  to  keep  them 
from  coming  to  actual  blows  in  the  Tagus.  Blake  was 
authorised  not  to  tolerate  even  tacit  hostility,  and  he 
soon  had  an  opportunity  of  striking  the  Portuguese  a 
shrewd  blow.  The  Portuguese  naval  power  had  sunk 
so  low  that  they  were  compelled  to  freight  English  ships 
to  carry  cargoes  bound  for  their  own  colonies.  When 
the  Brazil  fleet,  with  a  very  ill-advised  confidence,  put 
to  sea,  those  of  its  vessels  which  were  of  English 
nationality  were  impressed  by  Blake  for  the  service  of 
the  Commonwealth,  and  the  Portuguese  cargoes  were 
sequestered.  This,  as  the  English  Admiral  informed 
the  King,  was  only  meant  as  a  warning,  and  worse 
would  follow  if  Rupert  was  not  at  once  expelled.  He 
threatened  to  seize  the  home-coming  Brazil  fleet  which 
was  due  by  the  end  of  summer. 

This   attack   and    its    accompanying  threat  roused 
even  the  feeble  court  of  Portugal.     A  great  show  was 


60  Robert  Blake 

made  of  taking  steps  to  avenge  the  insult.  Ships  were 
equipped,  and  Eupert  was  asked  for  help.  The  Prince 
was  as  ready  as  usual  for  the  fray,  though  his  crews  had 
been  much  weakened  by  desertion,  but  nothing  came  of 
it  all.  The  Portuguese  ships  would  not  fight,  and 
Eupert's  could  not  unless  supported.  '  M.  La  Touche 
has  been  cutting  capers  outside  Sepefc  '  is  a  phrase  which 
occurs  frequently  in  Nelson's  letters  from  the  blockading 
fleet  off  Toulon,  and  with  the  necessary  change  of  names 
it  describes  this  and  the  following  sallies  of  Eupert's 
ships  from  the  Tagus.  He  could  not  without  manifest 
insanity  venture  far  from  the  protection  of  the  forts, 
while  Blake  could  not  risk  his  fleet  under  their  guns. 
The  whole  thing  ended  in  an  ineffectual  cannonade. 

In  the  course  of  September  something  very  effectual 
was  done.  Blake  had  been  reinforced  by  Popham  with 
eight  ships,  and  had  received  orders  to  seize  all  Portu- 
guese goods  at  sea.  He  therefore  kept  his  word  to 
King  John,  and  attacked  the  home-coming  Brazil  fleet 
five  miles  off  the  coast  of  Portugal.  One  was  sunk,  and 
a  round  dozen  were  captured,  all  richly  laden  with  sugar 
and  other  colonial  produce.  The  resistance  seems  to 
have  been  of  the  feeblest.  This  experience  convinced 
John  of  Braganza  that  it  was  decidedly  less  dangerous 
to  offend  Eupert  than  to  quarrel  with  the  masters  of 
England,  and  he  began  to  make  his  peace  in  earnest. 
The  Eoyalists  were  forced,  or  bribed  by  gifts  of  stores, 
to  take  themselves  off,  and  they  rid  King  John  of  their 
very  costly  presence  by  sailing  for  the  Straits  in 
October. 

This  second  escape  of  Eupert's  squadron  from  a 
blockaded  port  was  probably  due  to  the  foul  state  of 


The  Pursuit  of  Rupert  6i 

the  Parliament  ships.  In  those  days,  before  the  value 
of  copper  sheeting  had  been  discovered,  no  vessel  could 
keep  the  sea  for  long  without  getting  so  covered  with 
barnacles  as  to  lose  its  sailing  powers.  When  Blake 
had  given  the  Portuguese  their  lesson,  he  was  doubtless 
glad  enough  to  make  for  a  friendly  port,  and  so  pro- 
ceeded to  the  Spanish  port  of  San  Lucar  de  Barrameda  to 
careen.  Perhaps,  too,  it  was  thought  wise  to  meet  the 
King  of  Portugal  half-way,  and  spare  him  the  humilia- 
tion of  surrendering  his  guests.  However  that  may 
have  been,  Rupert  escaped.  He  ran  through  the  Straits 
and  sailed  up  the  coast  of  Spain,  appealing  to  the  King 
as  a  nominal  ally  of  his  master  for  help,  but  with  the 
ultimate  intention  of  making  for  Toulon.  As  the 
historian  of  the  voyage  puts  it, '  We  take  the  confines  of 
the  Mediterranean  for  our  harbour,  poverty  and  despair 
being  companions,  and  revenge  our  guide.5  The  appear- 
ance of  Rupert  in  Spanish  waters  did  something  to 
secure  attention  for  Clarendon  and  Cottington,  who 
were  acting  as  his  master's  ambassadors  in  Madrid,  but 
he  was  not  allowed  to  enter  any  harbour.  His  career 
here  was  short.  After  destroying  some  English  merchant 
ships  at  Estepona  and  Malaga,  and  capturing  one,  the 
'  Marmaduke '  of  London,  after  a  sharp  fight  at  sea, 
he  began  to  cruise  between  Cape  de  Gat  and  Palos. 
Meanwhile  Blake,  having  scraped  his  ships,  started  in 
pursuit.  In  November  1650  he  came  up  with  the  bulk 
of  the  Royalist  squadron  off  Carthagena  and  attacked 
them  at  once.  There  was  no  battle  deserving  the  name. 
Rupert  had  been  compelled  to  impress  men  from  English 
merchant  ships,  and  they  had  no  stomach  for  the  fight 
in  such  a  cause.   Blake  had  little  difficulty  in  capturing 


62  Robert  Blake 

or  driving  on  shore  the  whole  squadron.  When  the 
work  was  done,  it  must  have  been  a  grievous  dis- 
appointment to  Blake  to  find  that  Eupert  was  not  in 
the  fleet.  He  was  cruising  when  the  disaster  happened 
off  Formentera,  and  had  escaped  again.  From  this 
point,  however,  he  vanishes  from  the  life  of  Eobert 
Blake.  His  arrival  at  Toulon,  where  he  found  his 
brother,  his  departure  from  the  Mediterranean,  his  long 
stay  on  the  coast  of  Africa,  his  attempts  to  persuade  his 
companions  to  turn  buccaneers,  his  quarrels  with  his 
followers,  his  perils  among  the  Azores,  his  futile  visit 
to  the  West  Indies,  his  final  escape  in  the  tornado  off 
the  Virgin  Isles,  in  which  Maurice  went  down  with 
man  and  mouse,  and  his  safe  arrival  with  one  storm- 
battered  ship  at  Nantes  in  1653,  cannot  be  told  here. 

With  the  action  off  Oarthagena,  Blake's  work  in  the 
Mediterranean  was  done  for  the  present.  He  left  Penn 
behind  with  a  squadron  to  protect  British  shipping,  and 
brought  back  the  bulk  of  the  fleet  to  the  Channel.  One 
piece  of  service  he  did  before  the  action  at  Carthagena 
which  must  be  noted,  for  it  was  of  a  kind  it  fell  to  his 
lot  to  do  continuously,  and  on  a  larger  scale,  for  the 
rest  of  his  life.  The  French  had  profited  by  the  un- 
protected state  of  English  shipping  during  the  latter 
part  of  the  civil  war  to  plunder  traders  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean, and  had  lately  been  suspected  of  an  intention 
to  help  Eupert.  During  1650  the  Levant  Company 
had  made  many  and  bitter  complaints  to  the  Council  of 
State  of  the  loss  inflicted  on  them  by  French  piracy. 
The  time  had  gone  by  when  the  English  Government 
was  compelled  to  tolerate  such  outrages,  or  to  leave 
merchant  ships  to  protect  themselves.    Its  Admiral,  who 


The  Pursuit  of  Rupert  63 

well  knew  that  he  would  be  supported,  even  if  he  did 
not  act  by  express  orders,  determined  to  teach  the 
French  a  lesson  as  sharp  as  that  which  he  had  just 
taught  the  Portuguese.  When  in  the  Straits,  on  his 
way  to  attack  Rupert,  he  fell  in  with  four  of  their 
vessels,  and  captured  them  by  way  of  reprisal.  The 
officer  in  command  of  the  French  ships  is  reported, 
when  summoned  on  board  Blake's  flagship,  to  have  re- 
fused to  surrender  without  resistance,  and  to  have  been 
told  to  go  back  and  make  the  best  fight  he  could.  It 
does  seem  not  to  have  been  particularly  good.  The 
ships  were  taken,  their  cargoes  were  impounded,  and  the 
French  Government  was  left  to  digest  its  warning. 


64  Robert  Blake 


CHAPTER  V. 

IN   THE   CHANNEL,    AND   AT   WHITEHALL. 

Blake's  crews  must  have  heard  the  welcome  cry  of 
'  sand  and  shells '  from  the  man  at  the  lead,  which  told 
them  that  they  were  again  in  Channel  soundings,  in  the 
beginning  of  February  1651.  He  had  been  one  year 
absent,  and  had  been  cruising  continuously.  In  itself 
this  was  a  considerable  feat  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
when  the  hardiest  seamen  thought  it  almost  impossible 
to  keep  the  sea  with  a  squadron  of  large  ships  in  winter. 
His  efforts  to  carry  out  his  orders  had  not  been  wholly 
successful,  for  Eupert  was  still  at  large,  though  in  a 
crippled  condition,  but  he  had,  none  the  less,  done  much. 
Portugal  had  been  compelled  to  seek  peace  on  terms 
advantageous  to  England.  Spain  was  shut  to  the 
Royalists,  and  France  had  been  punished  for  her  sea- 
men's over-haste  in  profiting  by  the  supposed  naval 
weakness  of  the  English.  More  important  even  than 
his  services  in  actual  conflict  had  been  Blake's  success 
in  organising  a  thoroughly  efficient  squadron,  and  win- 
ning for  himself,  and  through  him  for  his  Government, 
the  loyal  devotion  of  the  seamen.  Before  the  year  was 
out,  the  Commonwealth  had  an  opportunity  of  showing 
how  thoroughly  it  trusted  his  influence  over  the  men 


In  the  Channel,  and  at  Whitehall      65 

who  manned  the  fleet.  Parliament  was  not  backward 
in  acknowledging  its  debt.  On  February  13,  c  upon  a 
relation  made  by  General  Blake  of  the  safe  arrival  of  that 
part  of  the  Parliament  fleet  which  is  under  his  command, 
aod  of  the  wonderful  appearance  of  the  powerful  hand 
of  God  with  him  in  his  services  at  sea/  he  was  voted 
the  thanks  of  the  House  for  his  great  and  faithful  ser- 
vice, and  duly  thanked  by  Mr.  Speaker.  At  the  same 
time,  and  according  to  an  admirable  custom,  he  was 
voted  a  substantial  testimony  of  gratitude  in  the  form 
of  1,000£.,  and  the  Council  of  State  was  ordered  to  see 
to  the  present  payment  of  this  sum.  Present  payment 
seems  to  have  been  more  difficult  than  voting,  for  exactly 
one  month  later  the  Admiralty  Committee  was  inquiring 
'  where  the  1,000Z.  ordered  by  Parliament  to  Colonel 
Blake  may  be  had,'  but  as  a  warrant  was  duly  issued 
by  the  Commissioners  of  Prizes,  the  reward  was  doubt- 
less finally  paid. 

Votes  of  thanks,  or  even  of  a  thousand  pounds,  are 
less  trustworthy  signs  of  confidence  than  immediate 
reappointment  to  an  important  command.  Blake  had 
the  third,  as  well  as  the  two  first.  On  March  15  he 
was  selected  to  take  charge  of  the  fleet  for  the  Irish 
Seas  and  the  Isle  of  Man.  The  names  of  the  ships  told 
off  to  form  his  command  are  not  without  interest  in 
themselves.  They  were  the  '  Phoenix/  i  Providence, 
6  Pox,'  <  Tenth  Whelp/  '  Mayflower/  <  Hind,'  '  Truelove/ 
1  Convertine,'  '  Little  President/  '  Constant  Warwick/ 
'  Convert/  and  the  galliot  '  Hoy.'  For  special  service 
on  the  Irish  coast  were  the  '  Portsmouth,'  '  Swiftsure/ 
'  Concord/  <  Fellowship,'  and  '  Hector.'  Names  of  ships 
are  curiously  permanent  in  the  English  navy.    We  have 

F 


66  Robert  Blake 

still  a  '  Swiftsure '  and  a  '  Hector/  descended  through  a 
long  line  of  fighting  craft  from  those  and  earlier  days. 
It  is  interesting,  too,  to  find  a  c  Mayflower '  in  Blake's 
squadron.  Was  she  the  Argo  of  New  England  (ships 
were  long-lived  then),  or  another  merchant  ship  of  the 
same  name  pressed  for  the  fleet.  We  have  seen  a  '  Con- 
vertine '  in  Rupert's  squadron.  Probably  this  was  the 
same  retaken.  There  was  a  c  Fox  '  in  Nelson's  squadron 
at  Tenerife.  He  heard  the  cries  of  her  crew  as  she 
sunk,  riddled  by  the  fire  of  the  Spanish  batteries,  while 
he  was  being  carried  back  to  the  '  Theseus  '  in  his  galley, 
desperately  wounded,  and  stopped,  regardless  of  his 
own  sufferings,  to  pick  up  the  drowning  men.  The 
6  Tenth  Whelp '  was  one  of  ten  sister  ships  built  by 
Charles  I.,  and  christened  first,  second,  third,  &c.  The 
'  Constant  Warwick '  ought,  if  the  naval  historian  knew 
what  he  was  about,  to  have  a  history  to  herself.  She 
was  the  first  English  frigate.  Originally  built  as  a 
private  war-ship  by  the  puritanical  and  piratical  Earl  of 
Warwick,  she  was  bought  by  Charles,  and  took  a  con- 
spicuous part  in  the  services  of  the  English  fleet  till 
far  into  the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  when  Mr.  Pepys  had 
to  point  out  how  she  had  been  reduced  from  a  prime 
sailer  to  a  slug  by  overgunning. 

Blake's  flag  had  not  been  flying  for  a  fortnight  when 
he  was  at  sea  again  in  hot  haste,  to  do  important 
service  and  avert  a  great  danger.  On  April  1,  orders 
were  hurrying  to  him  from  the  Council  of  State  to  finish 
the  business  he  knew  of  before  he  went  hence.  This 
was  the  reduction  of  the  Scilly  Isles,  still  held  by  Sir 
John  Green vil  for  the  King.  The  sudden  urgency  of 
the  Council  was  due  to  the  receipt  of  information  that 


In  the  Channel,  and  at  Whitehall      67 

Tromp  was  on  his  way  to  the  same  waters,  and  their 
orders  contain  a  warning  of  the  great  storm  which  was 
to  burst  in  the  Channel  a  year  later.  Sir  John  and  his 
Royalist  followers  had  begun  to  drop  into  something 
very  like  piracy.  They  had  been  capturing  Dutch 
vessels  as  well  as  English.  The  States  were  not  likely 
to  tolerate  this  sort  of  thing,  and  therefore  Tromp  was 
sent  with  a  squadron  to  bring  Greenvil  to  his  senses, 
and  perhaps  to  seize  Scilly.  So  most  Englishmen 
believed  at  least,  and  certainly  the  possession  of  a 
fortified  post  at  the  mouth  of  the  Channel  would  be  of 
infinite  use  to  Holland.  Now  the  Council  of  State  had 
need  to  see  that  no  such  thing  happened,  and  so  Blake 
was  hurried  off,  and  Ascue  was  commanded  to  join 
him.  The  orders  of  the  Council  were  as  usual  master- 
pieces of  decision  and  clearness  of  statement.  Blake 
was  to  push  on  the  business  of  Scilly,  and  if  Tromp 
interferes,  '  you  are,'  they  say,  '  to  require  him  to  desist, 
and  if  he  persists,  to  use  the  best  ways  and  means  you 
can  to  enforce  him,  and  in  all  things  to  preserve  the 
honour  and  interest  of  this  nation.'  In  less  official 
language,  Blake  was  to  blow  the  Dutchmen  out  of  the 
water  if  they  came  too  near  Scilly,  but  as  the  Council 
did  not  wish  for  a  war  with  Holland,  he  was  to  give 
Tromp  full  leave  to  take  satisfaction  on  Sir  John 
Greenvil,  provided  he  could  do  so  without  prejudice  to 
the  Commonwealth.  If  he  caught  the  Royalists  at  sea 
he  might  make  them  walk  the  plank,  but  he  must  not 
hang  them  on  shore  in  Scilly. 

Tromp,  finding  he  had  not  to  do  with  the  Govern- 
ment which  had  tamely  allowed  him  to  attack  Orquendo's 
galleons  under  the  very  guns   of  Dover   twelve  years 

F  2 


68  Robert  Blake 

before,  kept  at  a  respectful  distance.  Blake,  Ascue, 
and  a  military  officer,  Colonel  Clarke,  who  had  been 
detached  for  the  service  by  Desborow,  spent  April  and 
part  of  May  in  subduing  Sir  John  Green vil.  On  the 
24th  of  the  latter  month  the  Royalist  officer  surrendered, 
and  that  danger  was  averted. 

Besides  covering  Colonel  Clarke's  attack  on  the  forts 
at  St.  Mary  and  St.  Agnes,  Blake  had  it  in  charge  to 
stop  any  succour  the  Earl  of  Derby's  vessels  in  the  Isle 
of  Man  might  attempt  to  send  to  the  '  King  of  Scotland.' 
By  the  beginning  of  August  this  had  become  a  very 
pressing  question  indeed.  In  the  last  days  of  July 
Charles  Stuart,  rinding  his  position  at  Stirling  had  been 
rendered  untenable  by  Cromwell's  flank  march  through 
Fife,  suddenly  broke  up  his  camp  and  marched  rapidly 
south.  On  August  6  he  crossed  the  Border,  and  then  a 
stirring  month  began  for  the  Council  of  State.  Among 
the  innumerable  orders  they  poured  forth  all  over 
England  during  the  Royalist  march  to  Worcester,  there 
could  not  but  be  several  addressed  to  Blake.  One  of 
these  contained  perhaps  the  very  last  instructions  which 
would  be  expected  by  a  modern  admiral.  On  August  9 
he  was  informed  that  a  commission  had  been  issued, 
giving  him  command  of  all  the  troops  in  Cornwall, 
Devon,  Somerset,  and  Dorset,  during  the  absence  of 
Major-General  Desborow.  To  Blake  and  his  contem- 
poraries the  choice  of  a  commander  to  keep  the  Royalists 
in  check  while  the  bulk  of  the  Parliamentary  garrison 
was  drawn  off  for  service  in  the  field  can  have  caused 
no  surprise  whatever.  The  interchange  of  sea  and  land 
commands  was  common  enough,  and  nobody  could  be 
fitter  for  the  post  than  an  officer  who  had  seen  service 


In  the  Channel,  and  at  Whitehall      69 

all  over  the  West.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  commission 
never  took  effect.  The  death  of  Popham  deprived  the 
Parliament  of  a  trusted  officer  to  watch  the  Downs,  and 
Blake  was  immediately  chosen  to  fill  his  place.  Three 
days  after  being  appointed  to  command  on  shore,  he 
received  instructions  to  take  over  the  fleet,  '  to  keep 
those  affairs  in  good  order,  and  prevent  any  impression 
that  may  be  made  on  the  seamen  by  misrepresentation 
of  affairs.'  He  was,  in  his  own  phrase,  used  at  another 
crisis,  to  c  keep  foreigners  from  fooling  us.'  The  Council 
of  State  were  afraid  that  efforts  might  be  made  to  help 
the  Royalists  from  abroad,  and  doubtless  much  more 
disturbed  by  thoughts  of  the  possible  consequences  of 
another  mutiny.  Blake  hoisted  his  flag  in  the  '  Victory,' 
and  took  his  station  in  the  Downs.  Here  he  remained 
on  the  look-out  for  foreigners  seeking  to  fool  us,  and 
Royalist  agents  trying  to  stir  up  a  mutiny.  Neither 
one  nor  the  other  appeared.  The  crowning  mercy  of 
September  3  gave  the  Royalist  party  its  death-wound, 
and  a  few  weeks  later  the  '  Victory '  was  put  out  of 
commission. 

One  last  piece  of  service  Blake  had  to  do  against 
his  own  countrymen.  Within  a  few  months  he  would 
be  fighting  for  England  and  against  the  foreigner,  and 
gaining  the  admiration  of  Royalist  and  Roundhead  alike, 
but  in  the  meantime  there  was  one  more  blow  to  be 
struck  in  the  Civil  War.  Sir  George  Carteret  held 
Jersey  for  the  King,  and  there  was,  as  there  had  been 
in  the  case  of  Scilly,  a  danger  of  Dutch  intervention. 
An  expedition  was  despatched  in  October  to  capture 
this  last  Royalist  hold.  Blake  was  in  command  of  the 
squadron,  and  Colonel  Hayne  led  the  troops.     They  had 


70  Robert  Blake 

no  easy  task  before  them.  Carteret  had  some  4,000 
men  in  the  island,  and  his  forts  were  capable  of  defence, 
but  hard  as  it  might  be  to  beat  him,  it  was  harder  to 
get  at  him.  Landing  troops  in  the  face  of  an  active 
enemy  is  always  a  risky  operation,  and  when  it  has  to 
be  performed  on  a  rocky  coast  during  a  stormy  autumn, 
it  is  very  likely  to  end  in  disaster.  The  New  Model 
was  capable  of  this,  and  even  greater  things.  When 
Blake  reached  the  coasts  of  Jersey  he  found  the  weather 
too  bad  to  allow  of  any  attempt  at  landing  for  days. 
At  last,  when  the  horses  of  the  expedition  seemed  on 
the  point  of  being  utterly  destroyed  by  starvation  and 
rough  usage,  it  was  decided  to  make  a  push  for  the 
shore.  The  storm  had  moderated  sufficiently  to  allow 
of  the  boats  being  lowered.  They  were  soon  filled  with 
men,  and  were  driven  on  the  beach.  It  was  nearly  mid- 
night. The  Royalists,  who  must  have  seen  the  squadron 
hanging  off  the  coast  all  day,  were  on  the  alert,  and 
their  horse  fell  fiercely  on  the  Parliamentary  soldiers  as 
they  leapt  from  the  boats.  The  men  were  mostly  up  to 
their  necks  in  water,  and  in  the  darkness  and  confusion 
were  at  a  great  disadvantage,  but  they  belonged  to  a 
force  which  c  truly  was  never  beaten  at  all,'  and  they 
fought  their  way  on.  After  half  an  hour  of  sharp 
struggle  the  Royalist  horse  broke  and  fled. 

Sir  George  Carteret  was  convinced  by  this  defeat  of 
his  inability  to  keep  the  open  field,  and  retired  at  once 
into  Elizabeth  Castle.  The  minor  forts  fell  rapidly, 
Mount  Orgueil  surrendered  to  Hayne,  and  Blake  took 
up  a  position  outside  St.  Aubyn  Bay,  to  block  the 
governor  up  in  his  fortress.  If  Sir  George  had  been 
really  minded    to    escape,  the  Parliamentary  Admiral 


In  the  Channel,  and  at  Whitehall      yi 

might  have  watched  in  vain.  Elizabeth  Castle  stands 
among  the  shallows  and  reefs  of  the  Jersey  coast ;  boat- 
men accustomed  to  sail  among  them  from  their  youth 
upwards  could  easily  have  carried  the  garrison  over  to 
the  coast  of  France  by  detachments  under  cover  of  night. 
Lady  Carteret  and  some  thirty  civilians  did  escape  in 
this  very  way.  Her  husband  might  have  blown  the  castle 
up,  and  have  got  off  himself  after  holding  out  for  months, 
but  he  had  good  reason,  in  the  shape  of  an  estate,  not 
to  push  things  to  an  extremity.  The  Eoyalist  cause 
would  not  have  been  benefited  by  his  private  ruin,  and 
he  had  done  enough  for  honour.  At  the  end  of  1651 
he  surrendered  on  good  terms,  and  there  ended  the  fight 
for  or  against  the  Stuarts,  as  far  as  Blake  was  con- 
cerned. 

After  two  years  of  nearly  incessant  cruising  he  had 
rest — the  kind  of  rest  which  takes  the  form  of  a  change 
of  work — for  a  very  few  weeks.  In  the  interval  between 
subduing  Jersey  and  hoisting  his  flag  again  in  the  Downs 
to  meet  Tromp  in  February  1652,  he  must  have  been 
back  in  London,  in  his  place  in  Parliament.  His  name 
appears  in  the  list  of  the  Ordnance  and  Admiralty  Com- 
mittees in  December,  but  this  is  no  proof  of  his  return 
from  sea.  In  January,  however,  he  was  appointed  with 
others  to  hear  the  ambassador  of  the  Dukes  of  Tuscany 
and  Oldenburg  c  in  the  matted  Guard  Chamber,'  and 
his  name  was  added,  with  Mr.  Martin's,  to  the  general 
Committee  of  Foreign  Affairs.  These  were  duties  to 
be  attended  to  directly,  and  in  person.  The  business  of 
the  Duke  of  Tuscany,  which  fills  a  good  few  pages  of 
the  Calendar  of  State  Papers  about  this  time,  came  to 
be  put  straight  by  Blake  in   a  quite  unparliamentary 


72  Robert  Blake 

way  later  on.  Ferdinand  de'  Medici  had  quarrels  with 
the  Levant  Company,  or  they  with  him,  and  moreover 
he  had  his  share  in  the  great  Rupert  question.  One 
day  a  final  settlement  was  to  be  made  at  Leghorn  ; 
for  the  present  Blake  heard  the  ambassadors,  and  then 
had  to  see  to  the  arrangement  of  a  nearer  and  more 
pressing  matter.  His  command  of  the  fleet  was  renewed 
for  nine  months  on  February  25,  and  in  the  early  days 
of  the  next  month  the  Commonwealth  was  pointing  out 
to  him  the  extraordinary  occasion  there  was  for  getting 
a  fleet  to  sea  at  once,  and  he  was  visiting  the  Thames 
dockyards  with  a  general  commission  to  suspend  indo- 
lent or  incompetent  officials,  and  press  on  the  work. 
He  was  preparing  for  the  Dutch  war. 

Blake  had  now  reached  the  end  of  the  second  stage 
in  his  career.  The  defence  of  Taunton  had  marked 
him  out  as  an  able  and  trustworthy  officer.  There  had 
been  enough  in  his  services  during  the  three  arduous 
years  between  February  of  1649  and  February  of  1652 
to  show  that  he  possessed  the  qualities  required  in  a 
master  of  the  great  art  of  war.  He  had  won  no  striking 
victory,  and  had  even  then  been  partially  unsuccessful  in 
some  of  his  operations,  but  he  had  in  the  main  been 
victorious.  Rupert  was  still  at  large,  but  he  was  lurk- 
ing with  a  diminishing  force  on  the  coasts  of  Africa. 
The  Portuguese  and  French  had  been  smartly  chastised, 
the  Royalist  garrisons  had  been  swept  from  the  Channel, 
and  what  was  more  important  than  any  of  these  things, 
the  fleet  had  been  thoroughly  reorganised,  and  attached 
to  the  new  Government.  To  say  that  it  had  been 
gained  to  the  service  of  the  Rump  would  be  an  inaccurate 
way  of  stating  the  case,  but  it  was  prepared  to  serve  the 
rulers  of  England  for  the  time  being,  and  to  think  tha 


In  the  Channel,  and  at  Whitehall      73 

its  first  duty  was  to  keep  foreigners  from  interfering  in 
our  concerns. 

From  the  end  of  1651  there  is  a  distinct  change  in 
Blake's  position.  During  his  earlier  sea  services,  he 
was  simply  the  colleague  of  Popham  and  Deane.  The 
Parliament  seems  to  have  considered  Popham  the  most 
important  of  its  three  admirals  and  generals  at  sea. 
After  his  death  Blake,  who  had  now  a  long  list  of 
services  to  show,  became  incontestably  the  leading  man 
in  maritime  affairs,  and  one  of  the  foremost  Englishmen 
of  his  time.  He  was  joined  in  command  with  others 
during  the  ensuing  war,  but  it  was  always  with  a  certain 
superiority,  not  indicated  by  any  higher  nominal  rank, 
but  by  the  deference  shown  to  his  opinion.  The  almost 
absolute  power  given  him  over  the  dockyards  shows 
what  profound  confidence  was  felt  in  his  administrative 
faculty.  In  the  following  May  he  received  another 
proof  of  the  trust  felt  in  him  by  the  Council  of  State. 
Blank  commissions  were  sent  to  him  in  the  Downs,  to 
be  filled  up  with  the  names  of  the  officers  he  preferred 
to  have  under  him  as  vice  and  rear  admirals.  He  was 
to  fill  them  after  conferring  with  the  Lord  General  and 
Mr.  Bond,  who  were  also  engaged  in  urging  on  the 
naval  preparations  against  the  Dutch,  but  it  is  obvious 
that  a  large  discretion  was  left  in  his  hands. 

There  is  one  question  about  Blake  which  is  not 
without  interest,  and  which  may  be  as  conveniently  asked 
here  as  elsewhere.  Was  he,  whose  name  is  associated 
with  Nelson's  in  the  mind  of  all  Englishmen,  ever  in  the 
proper  sense  of  the  word  a  seaman  ?  It  seems  impos- 
sible that  a  country  gentleman,  and  colonel  of  horse  or 
foot,  who  never  went  to  sea  until  he  was  fifty,  can  ever 
have  attained  to  more  than  a  superficial  knowledge  of 


74  Robert  Blake 

an  art  only  to  be  mastered  by  much  and  early  practice. 
1  Sailorman  '  in  the  way  Anson,  Hawke,  or  Collingwood 
were  sailormen,  he  never  can  have  been.  He  never 
went  aloft,  or  kept  a  watch,  or  laid  a  ship's  course,  or 
commanded  a  boat  in  his  life.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
is  hard  to  believe  that  the  man  who  met  Tromp  on 
equal  terms  was  deficient  in  the  knowledge  required  to 
handle  a  fleet.  The  truth  probably  is,  that  he  had  ac- 
quired in  the  course  of  his  cruisings  on  the  coast  of 
Ireland  and  Portugal  very  much  that  knowledge  of 
sea  affairs  which  is  often  acquired  by  a  clever  admiralty 
lawyer  who  is  also  a  yachtsman.  It  would  not  have 
sufficed  to  enable  him  to  take  a  trading  brig  from  Hull 
to  Leghorn,  but  it  was  enough  to  enable  him  to  com- 
mand a  fleet.  As  Admiral  he  had  a  large  staff  of  officers 
to  carry  out  his  orders.  Penn,  Lawson,  and  many 
others  who  served  him  were  seamen,  and  to  them  he 
left  the  execution  of  the  movements  he  might  think 
necessary.  He  knew  what  ought  to  be  done,  and  had 
seamanship  enough  to  see  that  his  subordinates  did  it. 
That  he  had  the  moral  and  intellectual  qualities  which 
have  more  to  do  with  making  a  great  commander  than 
technical  knowledge — a  fact  much  overlooked  by  profes- 
sional men — is  beyond  question.  If  Lord  John  Eussell 
had  indeed  taken  command  of  the  Channel  fleet,  it  is  pos- 
sible that  he  might,  with  the  help  of  a  good  flag  captain, 
have  extricated  himself  from  the  difficulties  of  the  posi- 
tion with  unexpected  credit.  With  what  knowledge  he 
had  acquired  in  a  short  period  of  his  middle  life,  and 
a  firm  conviction  that  '  Expedition  was  the  soul  of  all 
military  affairs,'  Blake  did  succeed  in  defeating  the 
most  famous  admiral  and  the  most  practised  fleet  then 
existing  in  Europe. 


75 


CHAPTER   VI. 

WAR     WITH     HOLLAND. 

The  quarrel  between  England  and  the  States  had  been 
ripening  for  years  before  it  finally  exploded  in  open 
war.  From  early  in  the  reign  of  James  I.  a  number  of 
irritating  questions  had  been  in  debate  between  the  two 
countries.  There  were  diplomatic  causes  of  dispute  in 
abundance  which  might  have  led  to  an  open  rupture  if 
James  had  been  less  a  lover  of  peace,  or  Charles  had 
not  been  so  weak.  These  political  matters  had,  how- 
ever, done  less  to  anger  Englishmen  than  a  variety  of 
commercial  and  maritime  quarrels.  In  the  seventeenth 
century  the  Dutch  were  in  a  condition  of  advancing, 
and,  as  Englishmen  felt,  offensive  prosperity.  Their 
carrying  trade  was  flourishing  in  a  way  which  seemed 
monstrous  to  a  people  who  held  it  the  first  duty  of  a 
Government  to  protect  native  industry.  Their  busses 
fished  openly  in  English  waters,  and  refused  obstinately 
to  pay  the  tax  of  the  tenth  herring  claimed  by  the 
King.  Whole  fleets  of  these  craft  took  up  their  station 
in  English  waters  under  protection  of  an  armed  convoy. 
In  the  East  Indies  the  Dutch  and  English,  after  banding 
together  to  oust  the  Portuguese,  had  come  to  blows 
over  their  booty.     The  Dutch  East  India  Company  had 


j6  Robert  Blake 

driven  the  English  from  the  Spice  Islands.     We  had 

not  yet  found  that  they  had  thereby  done  us  the  service 

of  compelling  us  to  turn  to  the  coasts  of  Malabar  and 

Coromandel,   and  lay  the  foundations  of  our  Eastern 

Empire.     In  1650  the  loss  was  fresh,  and  men  did  not 

forget  that  the  massacre  of  Amboyna  and  the  lonely 

death  of  Nathaniel  Courthope  in  Puleroon  were  still 

unavenged.     To  no  small  extent  the  Dutch  had  taken 

the  place  of  the  Spaniards  as  the  object  of  the  English 

sailor's  hatred.    The  open  partiality  of  the  Orange  party 

for  the  Royalists  had  added  another  grievance,  while  in 

1651  the  fears  of  some  enterprise  against  the  Channel 

Islands  had  strengthened  the  already  existing  causes  of 

quarrel. 

The  Parliament  had,  as  soon  as  it  was  at  leisure  to 

attend  to  domestic  affairs,  taken  measures  to  correct  the 

real  or  supposed  grievances  of  the  trading  community 

by  passing  the  famous  Navigation  Act.1     While   the 

anger  of  Holland  at  this  sharp  blow  was  still  blazing, 

the  Parliament  had  made  proposals  to  the  States  for  a 

union  between  the  Commonwealths.     This  request  for 

a  resignation  of  national  life  was  refused  in  the  natural 

course  of  things.     The   murder  of  Dr.   Dorislaus  by 

Eoyalist  refugees  at  the  Hague,  and  the  cold  reception 

given  to  Oliver  St.  John,  the  Commonwealth's  envoy, 

had  added    to   other   causes    of  irritation   till,  by  the 

beginning  of  1652,  both  countries  were  in  a  thoroughly 

pugnacious  frame   of  mind,  and  only  an  accident  was 

1  The  Navigation  Act,  first  passed  by  the  Long  Parliament  and 
re-enacted  after  the  Restoration,  forbade  the  importation  of  goods 
into  England  except  in  English  vessels,  or  the  vessels  of  the 
country  producing  them.  It  was  aimed  at  the  carrying  trade  of  the 
Dutch. 


War  with  Holland  yy 

required  to  bring  on  a  war.  It  is  in  the  last  degree  un- 
likely, with  all  these  stimulants  spiriting  the  two  peoples 
on  to  fight,  that  peace  could  have  been  permanently 
maintained ;  but  the  collision  was  hurried  on  by  the 
Governments.  Both  were  equally  active  in  asserting 
their  wish  for  a  firm  alliance,  and  in  pushing  on  their 
naval  armaments.  The  States  had  Tromp  at  sea  with 
a  strong  squadron,  and  the  Parliament  was  straining 
every  nerve  to  strengthen  the  fleet  under  Blake  in  the 
Downs. 

There  was  one  subject  of  dispute  which  under  these 
circumstances  might  have  been  calculated  to  set  the 
guns  of  the  rival  admirals  firing  of  their  own  mere 
motion.  The  kings  of  England  had  for  long — it  may 
almost  be  said  from  the  earliest  times — claimed  a  species 
of  sovereignty  over  the  narrow  seas.  Their  officers  had 
always  been  under  orders  to  insist  on  a  salute  from 
foreign  ships  as  a  recognition  of  this  right.  This  mark 
of  respect  had  been  insisted  on  and  received  even  by 
single  cruisers  from  strong  squadrons  carrying  the  am- 
bassadors of  powerful  States,  and  even  sometimes  the 
sovereign  himself.  The  act  of  submission  was  not 
always  willingly  made,  and  many  cases  might  be  cited  in 
which  English  admirals  had  fired  on  foreign  flags  during 
peace  because  the  stranger's  topsails  were  not  lowered 
promptly  enough.  In  ordinary  times  these  splutterings 
of  battle  lead  to  no  serious  consequences.  Fighting  on 
blue  water  was  too  common  for  any  or  for  no  reason  at 
all  to  excite  much  national  feeling,  and  the  salute  was 
at  least  an  acknowledged  usage  ;  but  when  there  was  a 
general  inclination  to  fight,  this  question  of  the  salute 
was  eminently  fitted  to  afford  a  pretext  for  war.     So  it 


?8  Robert  Blake 

proved  in  1652.  From  the  beginning  of  that  year 
English  captains  had  been  more  than  usually  peremptory 
in  asserting  their  superiority,  and  broadsides  had  been 
exchanged  in  the  Channel.  At  last  the  thing  was 
brought  to  a  crisis  by  Blake  and  Tromp  themselves. 

In  the  early  days  of  May,  the  Dutch  admiral  was 
cruising  with  a  fleet  of  some  forty  sail  between  Nieuport 
and  the  mouth  of  the  Meuse,  with  general  orders  to 
protect  his  country's  commerce  and  watch  the  English 
fleet.  Blake  was  lying  in  Dover  Roads  with  fifteen  sail, 
while  eight  others  were  at  anchor  under  Bourne  in  the 
Downs.  Stories  of  encounters  in  the  Channel  and  of 
the  difficulties  of  Dutch  merchantmen  watched  by 
English  war- ships  would  naturally  be  brought  to  Tromp 
by  his  cruisers.  He  was  not  the  man  to  hear  them 
tamely.  Tromp  had  a  bitter  personal  quarrel  of  his 
own  with  the  English.  He  had  to  revenge  his  father's 
death  in  battle  with  an  English  pirate,  and  his  own 
long  slavery  to  his  father's  slayer.  As  a  member  of  the 
Orange  party,  and  therefore  a  friend  of  the  Stuarts,  he 
had  a  double  reason  for  hating  the  fleet  of  the  Common- 
wealth. Now,  with  a  long  career  of  victory  to  give  him 
confidence,  conscious  of  the  devotion  of  the  Dutch 
seamen,  knowing  that  the  two  Governments  were 
daily  coming  nearer  to  open  war,  and  that  he  would 
be  supported  by  the  national  pride  of  Holland,  he  must 
have  entered  the  Straits  with  a  predisposition  to  come 
to  blows.  Some  civilities  seem  to  have  passed  between 
him  and  Bourne  in  the  Downs,  which  Tromp  had 
entered  under  stress  of  weather.  In  this  case  the 
Dutch  admiral  would  have  no  scruple  in  saluting  an 
officer   who   was-  at   anchor  in  his  own  waters.     On 


War  with  Holland  79 

May  19  Tromp  stood  over  towards  Calais  with  a  north- 
easterly wind.  On  his  way  he  was  met  by  a  Captain 
Van  Saanen  of  Amsterdam,  who  brought  news  of  a 
brush  between  single  ships  off  the  Start,  and  of  the 
difficulties  of  some  Dutch  merchantmen  blockaded  in 
the  Channel.  He  took  his  decision  at  once.  The 
Dutch  fleet,  which  had  been  standing  to  the  eastward 
close-hauled,  was  put  before  the  wind,  and  with  Tromp 
himself  at  the  head  in  his  flagship,  the  *  Brederode,'  it 
bore  down  on  Dover  Roads,  the  scene  of  his  own  auda- 
cious attack  on  Orquendo. 

The  meeting  with  Van  Saanen  and  the  change 
of  course  were  both  clearly  seen  from  the  decks  of 
Blake's  ships,  which  were  under  weigh,  standing  across 
the  Straits  in  a  course  parallel  to  that  first  held  by  the 
Dutch  fleet.  To  the  English  Admiral  and  captains 
there  could  be  no  mystery  in  what  had  happened. 
Tromp  had  received  orders  from  Holland  to  attack 
them,  and  was  bearing  down  for  the  purpose.  In  their 
accounts  of  what  followed,  each  admiral  accused  the 
other  of  being  the  aggressor,  and  both  were  doubtless 
quite  sincere  in  their  belief.  It  is  never  easy  to  say 
whether  the  fire  commits  an  aggression  on  the  gun- 
powder or  the  gunpowder  on  the  fire.  As  the  fleets 
neared  in  that  May  afternoon,  they  had  begun  war  in 
their  hearts,  and  the  actual  fighting  was  a  spontaneous 
act.  Guns  were  fired  from  both  flagships — Blake's 
flag  was  flying  in  the  c  James ' — as  they  approached, 
which  were  said  to  be  signals  by  one  side,  and  received 
as  insults  by  the  other.  Then  crash  came  the  c  Brede- 
rode's '  broadside  into  the  English  ship. 

A  foolish  story  tells  how  Blake  was  sitting  in  his 


80  Robert  Blake 

cabin — like  the  Spanish  gentleman  with  the  impossible 
name  in  ( Westward  Ho,'  and  i  his  officers  were  sitting 
round  him,  with  their  swords  upon  the  table,  at  the 
wine  '  when  Tromp's  guns  shattered  the  stern  windows 
of  the  '  James.'  So  dull  an  imagination  had  the  inventor 
of  this  tale,  that  he  can  find  no  other  words  for  Blake's 
mouth  than  the  feeble  jest,  c  Tromp  is  ill  bred  to  take 
my  house  for  a  brothel  and  break  my  windows.'  The 
author  of  this  c  grobe  Seemannswitz,'  which  has  had  a  most 
undeserved  popularity,  put  his  hero  in  a  very  unlikely 
place,  and  among  very  improbable  surroundings.  Long 
before  the  Dutch  bullets  came  crashing  into  the  c  James's ' 
timbers,  Blake  must  have  been  on  the  high  poop  of  his 
flagship,  watching  every  movement  of  the  '  Brederode,' 
as  she  came  down  on  his  line  before  the  north-easterly 
gale.  His  men  were  at  quarters,  with  their  guns  cast 
loose  and  their  linstocks  burning.  Tromp's  challenge 
was  taken  up  at  once.  The  batteries  of  the  '  James ' 
opened  fire.  It  was  about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
and  the  battle  lasted  fiercely  for  five  hours.  For  some 
considerable  time  the  brunt  of  it  fell  on  the  '  James ' 
alone.  Blake — like  Colling  wood  on  the  great  day  which 
ended  the  struggle  for  the  sovereignty  of  the  seas  then 
beginning — had  outsailed  his  squadron.  He  met  the 
head  of  the  Dutch  line  alone.  In  a  few  moments  he 
was  surrounded  by  enemies.  Tromp's  supporters  were 
running  before  the  wind  and  could  join  him,  before  the 
close-hauled  ships  of  the  English  line  could  come  to  the 
support  of  their  Admiral.  The  fight  was  less  unequal 
than  a  mere  statement  of  the  numbers  engaged  would 
seem  to  make  it.  The  English  ships  of  the  day  were 
more  solidly  built  than  the  Dutch,  and  the  gunnery  of 


War  with  Holland  8i 

the  English  sailors  was  already  famous  for  its  rapidity 
and  precision.  Still  the  l  James  '  suffered  heavily  ;  her 
master  was  killed,  and  some  fifty  of  her  men  fell  dead 
or  disabled.  Before  dark  her  mainmast  had  gone  over 
her  side,  and  she  had  been  struck  in  hull  or  rigging  by 
numbers  of  bullets.  Meanwhile,  the  rest  of  the  squadron 
had  come  into  the  line  of  battle,  and  at  some  time  be- 
fore nine  o'clock  relief  reached  the  overmatched  English 
squadron.  The  thunder  of  the  guns  was  heard  even  if 
the  fight  was  not  seen  by  Bourne  in  the  Downs,  and  he 
weighed  at  once.  While  Tromp  and  Blake  were  laying 
yardarm  to  yardarm  he  fell  on  the  rear  of  the  Dutch  line, 
cutting  off  two  of  their  ships,  and  created  a  diversion. 
Soon  afterwards  the  Dutch  gave  up  the  attempt  to  force 
the  Straits,  hauled  to  the  wind  and  stood  over  to  the 
Flemish  coast  in  the  dark,  leaving  the  two  prizes  in  the 
hands  of  the  English  seamen.  During  the  following 
day  the  fleets  were  in  sight  of  one  another,  but  the 
action  was  not  renewed.  The  English  made  their  way 
into  Dover,  towing  their  dismasted  flagship,  and  Tromp 
returned  to  the  Texel.  Before  going  he  recovered  one 
of  the  two  lost  ships,  which  had  been  deserted  by  her 
captor  Lawson,  as  too  much  battered  to  be  worth 
carrying  into  port. 

The  Admirals  hastened  to  justify  what  they  had 
done  to  their  respective  Governments.  It  was  no  small 
thing.  The  fight  off  Dover  was  the  beginning  of  the 
most  obstinate  struggle  in  the  whole  history  of  naval 
warfare.  When  the  news  of  what  was  believed  to  be 
Tromp's  unprovoked  attack  reached  London,  there  was 
an  immediate  and  noisy  demonstration  in  favour  of  war 
with  Holland.     The  mob  was  so  violent  that  the  Council 

a 


82  Robert  Blake 

thought  it  necessary  to  send  a  guard  to  protect  the 
house  occupied  by  the  Dutch  ambassadors.  The  States, 
though  they  would  greatly  have  preferred  to  avoid  a 
rupture,  were  not  prepared  to  submit  to  the  exorbitant 
demands  of  the  Rump,  and  after  another  effort  at  nego- 
tiations, entered  with  spirit  into  the  war,  which,  what- 
ever the  earlier  provocations  given  to  England  may  have 
been,  was  in  this  case  forced  upon  them. 

No  two  adversaries  ever  met  in  the  history  of  naval 
war  more  fairly  matched  than  the  fleets  of  England  and 
Holland.  The  whale  and  herring  fisheries,  the  carrying 
trade,  their  great  commerce  with  the  East  and  with 
the  Levant,  had  given  the  Dutch  an  undoubted  supe- 
riority in  material  resources  over  any  possible  rival. 
Their  shipping  was  calculated  to  be  equal  to  that  of  all 
the  other  states  of  Europe  put  together.  Their  seafaring 
population,  very  large  in  itself,  was  reinforced  by  sailors 
of  the  hardy  nations  of  the  North,  who  found  good 
work  and  wages  in  the  ports  of  Holland  and  Zeeland. 
During  the  long  war  with  Spain,  their  fleets  had  been 
in  constant  employment.  Their  admirals  were  the  only 
sea  commanders  who  can  be  said  to  rank  with  the 
English  admirals,  and  some  of  them,  notably  Tromp 
and  De  Ruyter,  were  fully  the  equals  of  any  of  our  own 
heroes.  In  mere  number  of  ships,  not  by  any  means 
the  most  important  factor  of  naval  strength,  the  States 
had  immense  resources.  During  this  war,  which  barely 
lasted  twenty  months,  no  less  than  sixty  fighting  vessels, 
many  of  them  very  large,  were  launched  in  the  Dutch 
yards — a  number  at  ]east  sufficient  to  replace  their  total 
loss  by  shipwreck  or  capture.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Netherlands  suffered  from  several  weaknesses.     They 


War  with  Holland  83 

were  so  dependent  upon  trade  that  as  soon  as  it  became 
impossible  to  continue  the  fisheries,  and  difficult  to 
bring  home  the  convoys  from  the  East  or  the  Levant, 
surrender  on  any  tolerable  terms  became  a  necessity. 
Dutchmen  could  put  their  country  under  water  to 
escape  foreign  conquest,  but  were  not  prepared  to  be 
ruined  for  a  point  of  honour.  After  all,  the  lady  who 
did  not  fear  death,  but  who  could  not  stand  pinching, 
was  not  a  wholly  absurd  person.  The  strength  of  their 
navy,  too,  lay  rather  in  its  quantity  than  its  quality. 
Hitherto  they  had  only  had  to  fight  the  clumsy  and  ill- 
managed  Spanish  galleons.  The  States  had  conse- 
quently been  tempted  to  build  their  vessels  slightly, 
and  of  inferior  timber.  In  order  that  they  might 
navigate  the  shallows  of  the  Dutch  coast,  they  were 
constructed  with  very  flat  bottoms.  They  were  there- 
fore ill-fitted  to  cope  with  severe  gunnery,  and  were 
not  nearly  so  weatherly  as  the  English  ships.  Obstinate 
courage  and  good  seamanship  might  have  triumphed  over 
these  defects,  but  there  was  a  terrible  source  of  weakness 
in  the  very  heart  of  the  Dutch  fleet.  The  officers  were 
divided  by  political  quarrels.  Each  of  the  Dutch  factions 
— the  Orange  and  the  Eepublican,  had  its  supporters 
among  the  naval  officers.  In  the  desperate  battles  of 
the  next  twenty  months,  it  happened  too  often  for  the 
honour  of  Holland,  but,  as  we  may  confess  without 
shame,  happily  for  the  fortune  of  England,  that  an 
admiral  of  one  party  was  badly  supported,  or  shamefully 
deserted,  by  officers  of  the  other. 

The  naval  power  of  the  Commonwealth  and  of  the 
Protectorate,  which  came  into  being  in  the  middle  of 
the    war,    was    smaller   than   the    Dutch,    but   it   was 

g  2 


84  Robert  Blake 

thoroughly  sound.  Charles  had  left  some  sixty  ships, 
mostly  built  by  the  Petts,  and  the  Admiralty  Committee 
had  been  launching  others  in  batches  of  eight  or  ten, 
for  the  last  three  years.  England  was  not  liable  to 
find  its  trade  spoilt  because  one  route  was  blocked.  It 
was  moreover  still  mainly  an  agricultural  country,  and 
therefore  better  able  to  bear  interruption  to  its  com- 
merce. The  political  divisions  of  Englishmen,  bitter  as 
they  were,  did  not  extend  to  the  fleet.  Cases  of  mis- 
conduct did  occur,  but  they  were  attributable  to  indi- 
vidual failings,  to  cowardice  or  stupidity,  and  with 
these  the  Government  dealt  in  a  very  summary  way. 
It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  line  of  battle  was  always 
partly  composed  of  merchant  ships  hired  or  pressed  for 
the  war.  In  not  a  few  cases  they  were  left  in  command 
of  their  skippers,  who  might  have  neither  the  will  nor 
the  ability  to  fight  them  properly.  These  men  were 
often  part  or  whole  owners  of  the  ships,  and  they  shrank 
from  thrusting  all  the  property  they  had  in  the  world 
under  Tromp's  guns.  It  was  soon  found  that  vessels 
handled  in  this  fashion  were  a  mere  hindrance  in  the 
line,  and  the  Commonwealth,  largely  on  Blake's  recom- 
mendation, made  it  a  rule  to  employ  their  own  officers 
only.  If  there  were  any  among  them  who  needed  a 
stimulus  in  the  discharge  of  their  duty,  it  was  supplied 
by  the  knowledge  that  they  had  to  choose  between 
the  risk  of  being  shot  by  tthe  Dutch,  and  certainty  of 
being  shot  for  cowardice  at  home  if  they  flinched. 
With  these  forces,  in  which  experience,  numbers, 
and  quality  were  so  fairly  balanced,  the  greatest 
naval  power  of  the  day  and  the  greatest  naval  power 
of  the   future   came   out  in  the  summer    of  1652    to 


War  with  Holland  85 

measure  their  forces  in  the  wide  lists  of  the  North 
Sea. 

The  length  of  time  which  passed  before  the  main 
fleets  of  the  two  countries  were  ready  for  action  is  a 
clear  proof  that  the  war  had  come  upon  their  Govern- 
ments as  a  surprise.  Of  the  two,  the  English  was  the 
better  prepared.  Over  and  above  the  ships  fitting  in 
the  Thames,  they  had  the  fleet  of  Sir  George  Ascue 
who  had  just  returned  from  the  West  Indies,  whither 
he  had  gone  to  take  possession  of  the  colonies  in  the 
name  of  the  Parliament.  He  joined  Blake  in  the 
Downs,  and  the  two  at  once  devoted  themselves  to 
the  pleasant  and  lucrative  work  of  snapping  up  Dutch 
convoys.  All  the  advantages  were  on  the  side  of 
England  in  this  game.  The  Dutch  were  coming  home 
in  ignorance  of  the  fact  that  war  had  broken  out,  and 
were,  as  a  matter  of  course,  taking  the  ordinary  route 
along  the  Channel,  which  led  them  right  past  the 
English  coast  into  the  hands  of  the  fleet  in  the  Downs 
— even  if  they  had  the  luck  to  get  so  far.  In  the 
course  of  June,  therefore,  the  Londoners  had  frequently 
the  pleasure  of  hearing  that  this  or  the  other  handful 
of  Dutch  merchant  ships,  all  more  or  less  richly  laden, 
had  been  captured  by  Admiral  Blake  or  Admiral 
Ascue,  and  sent  into  the  Thames.  That  magic  word 
prize-money  was  ringing  in  the  ears  of  all  Wapping, 
and  sailors  came  cheerfully  in  to  man  the  ships. 

In  the  last  days  of  June  Blake  sailed  north  with  '  a 
gallant  fleet'  to  sweep  the  Dutch  fishermen  off  the 
coasts  of  England  and  Scotland.  This  was  useful  and 
necessary  work,  for  the  poaching  of  the  Hollanders  had 
been  one  of  the  grievances  which  brought  on  the  war, 


86  Robert  Blake 

but  it  could  not  be  glorious.  With  a  fleet  of  at  least 
forty  sail  under  his  command,  the  English  Admiral 
could  have  no  difficulty  in  overpowering  the  fifteen 
frigates  of  the  Dutch  convoy.  He  did  what  he  had  to 
do  thoroughly.  The  coast  was  swept  to  the  extreme 
north  of  Scotland,  the  enemy's  guard-ships  were  taken 
or  sunk,  the  cargoes  of  poached  herrings  were  thrown 
into  the  sea,  and  the  busses  were  sent  empty  home. 
While  the  bulk  of  the  English  fleet  was  engaged  in 
this  fashion,  the  Council  of  State  was  learning  a  lesson 
as  to  the  folly  of  dividing  its  forces  in  the  presence  of 
the  enemy.  Barely  had  Blake  passed  Dunbar  when 
Tromp  swept  out  of  the  Texel  and  appeared  in  the 
Straits  with  upwards  of  a  hundred  sail.  There  was  no 
force*  to  meet  him  except  Sir  George  Ascue's  squadron 
of  fourteen  ships  in  the  Downs,  and  the  vessels  fitting 
for  sea  in  the  Thames.  These  last  were  not  ready  to 
sail,  and  even  if  they  had  been,  could  not  have  left  the 
river  without  manifest  danger  of  being  overpowered  in 
the  midst  of  the  Dutch  fleet.  Ascue  took  the  only 
course  open  to  him.  He  ran  under  the  guns  of  Dover 
Castle,  and  anchored  his  ships  as  close  as  possible  to 
the  shore.  For  a  time  there  seemed  danger  of  an 
actual  invasion,  or  at  least  of  some  attack  on  Ascue  by 
Tromp,  who  knew  those  waters  well.  Though  the 
Council  of  State  had  made  a  mistake,  it  did  not  lose 
its  head.  There  was  no  panic.  Letters  were  sent  to 
Blake  telling  him  of  the  state  of  things,  and  leaving  it 
to  him  to  return  or  stay  where  he  was,  as  he  thought 
best.  Frigates  were  stationed  off  the  Lizard  to  warn 
home-coming  merchant  ships  to  put  into  the  western 
ports  till  the  danger  was  past.     Cromwell  went  down 


War  with  Holland  87 

to  Dover  to  superintend  the  erection  of  batteries ;  the 
inland  garrisons  were  hurried  down  to  the  coast,  and 
the  militia  called  out.  These  measures  would  probably 
have  been  enough  to  make  any  attack  of  Tromp's  a 
failure,  but  none  was  ever  made.  The  fortune  of 
England,  which  has  saved  her  from  the  consequences  of 
so  much  blundering,  was  true  on  this  occasion  also. 
Tromp's  fleet  was  kept  idle  by  calms  for  days,  and 
when  the  wind  did  come  it  was  from  the  south-west. 
Finding  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  at  Dover,  the 
Dutch  Admiral  sailed  north,  partly  with  the  object  of 
meeting  Blake,  but  also  to  find  and  protect  a  squadron 
of  richly  laden  East  Indiamen  which  were  returning  to 
Holland  by  that  route. 

If  the  fleets  had  met  there  would  have  been  an 
earlier  version  of  the  battle  off  the  Ness,  but  Tromp 
had  lost  his  luck.  He  met  the  Indiamen  between  the 
Orkneys  and  Norway,  but  before  he  could  find  the 
English  ships  a  series  of  terrible  gales  scattered  his 
fleet,  and  he  was  driven  back  to  the  Texel  with  about 
half  his  force.  The  other  half  was  either  lost  or  driven 
into  the  ports  of  Norway.  For  a  time  it  was  believed  in 
England  that  all  these  ships  had  gone  to  the  bottom, 
but  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  greater  part  of  them  got 
back  to  Holland  before  long.  They  did  not  come  home 
to  be  under  the  command  of  Tromp.  The  year  had 
been  disastrous  to  Holland.  Thousands  of  families 
had  suffered  loss  or  even  ruin  by  the  scattering  of  the 
herring  fleet.  With  its  usual  injustice  the  mob  laid  the 
blame  for  this  misfortune,  and  others  of  the  same  kind 
which  had  happened  to  the  convoys,  on  Tromp.  They 
thought  he  might  have  prevented  at  least  the  capture  of 


88  Robert  Blake 

the  busses  by  sailing  at  once  to  the  north  instead  of 
wasting  time  (as  they  would  call  it)  in  threatening 
Ascue.  In  high  dudgeon  at  the  ingratitude  of  his 
countrymen,  and  perhaps  with  a  self-reproachful  sense 
of  the  spice  of  truth  there  was  in  the  charge,  Tromp 
resigned,  his  commission.  The  States,  who  were,  with 
all  the  meanness  of  party  politicians,  not  sorry  to  part 
with  an  officer  of  known  Orange  opinions,  accepted  his 
resignation.  De  Witt  and  De  Ruyter,  la  monnaie  de  M. 
Turenne,  were  appointed  his  successors. 

Before  they  had  an  opportunity  of  showing  whether 
they  could  fill  his  place,  there  was  a  little  bit  of  fighting 
done  in  the  Channel  altogether  outside  of  the  great  war. 
Scores  were  not  yet  settled  with  the  French,  and  just 
at  that  moment  the  Parliament  saw  a  chance  of  teaching 
them  an  effective  lesson.  Dunkirk  was  besieged  by  the 
Spaniards,  and  Cardinal  Mazarin  was  sending  a  squad- 
ron to  relieve  it  under  the  Duke  of  Venddme.  He  never 
reached  that  port.  Blake  was  back  from  the  north  by 
this  time  with  prizes  taken  from  the  scattered  fleet  of 
Tromp.  In  Calais  Roads  he  fell  upon  the  eight  ships  of 
Vendome's  squadron,  and  made  exceedingly  short  work 
of  them.  A  more  remarkable  instance  of  the  high- 
handed proceedings  of  the  Rump's  Council  of  State 
was  never  given.  England  was  neither  in  alliance  with 
Spain  nor  at  war  with  France,  but  it  acted  as  if  it  were. 
The  French  had  chosen  to  permit  insults  to  English 
trade,  and  they  were  made  to  suffer.  For  the  rest,  the 
lawless  state  of  the  sea  in  those  times  made  these  acts  of 
reprisal  less  surprising  than  they  would  have  appeared 
even  fifty  years  later.  In  the  following  century  Blake's 
biographer  obviously  felt  that  this  affair  in  Calais  Roads 


War  with  Holland  89 

had  a  look  of  piracy,  and  he  casts  about  for  excuses. 
Some  he  felt  there  must  have  been,  though  it  is  c  no- 
where mentioned  what  inquiry  Admiral  Blake  made 
into  this  matter.'  It  would  have  been  surprising  if  it 
were.  In  1652  the  thing  needed  no  excuse.  The 
French  had  made  no  inquiry  when  they  plundered  the 
ships  of  the  Smyrna  Company,  nor  did  Blake  when 
he  fell  on  Vendome.  He  had  his  orders,  and  acted  on 
them. 

With  the  exception  of  this  episode  Blake  was 
engaged  during  August  and  September  in  cruising  off 
the  coast  of  Holland  and  watching  the  Straits  of  Dover. 
In  the  former  month  Sir  George  Ascue  had  a  sharp  fight 
with  De  Euyter,  who  was  bringing  home  a  convoy,  in 
the  Channel.  The  action  was  indecisive,  and  the  Dutch 
Admiral  seems  to  have  carried  by  far  the  greater  part, 
if  not  all,  of  his  merchant  ships  safe  into  port,  to 
have  joined  De  Witt,  and  stood  to  sea  at  once  in  search 
of  the  English  fleet.  Naval  warfare,  as  Nelson  was  fond 
of  insisting  whenever  he  had  missed  anybody,  is  very 
uncertain,  and  it  was  perhaps  not  due  to  any  want  of 
vigilance  that  De  Euyter  was  able  to  pass  Doyer  and 
reach  port  unmolested.  So  little  can  be  learnt  about 
Blake's  movements  for  these  weeks,  too,  that  we  cannot 
even  say  whether  he  was  in  a  position  to  watch  the 
Dutch.  On  August  18  even  the  Council  of  State  knew 
his  whereabouts  so  badly  as  to  be  under  the  necessity 
of  sending  messengers  in  search  of  him  to  places  so 
widely  apart  as  Southwold,  Yarmouth,  and  Dover. 
Whether  by  ill-luck,  ill-management,  or  that  want  of 
frigates  which  so  often  drove  Nelson  to  the  verge  of 
madness,  Blake  missed  De  Euyter.     In  the  early  part 


90  Robert  Blake 

of  September  the  Dutch  Admiral  and  his  colleague 
appeared  off  the  Goodwin  Sands,  and  challenged  the 
fleet  in  the  Downs  to  battle.  They  had  done  their  best 
for  the  trade  of  their  country  for  the  year,  and  were  now 
about  to  try  and  provide  for  the  next  by  driving  the 
English  fleet  into  port. 

The  battle  which  followed  has  one  feature  which 
distinguishes  it  from  most  others  of  this  war.  It  is 
more  intelligible  than  the  majority  of  them.  Sea  fights 
are  sever  easy  to  be  understood  by  landsmen,  nor  even 
by  naval  officers,  if  we  are  to  judge  by  the  extraordinary 
discrepancies  in  the  accounts  they  give  of  them.  If  any 
reader  cares  to  test  this  statement  let  him  read  James's 
account  of  the  battle  of  June  1  (a  very  good  specimen), 
or  any  narrative  of  Kodney's  great  victory  over  De 
Grasse,  and  see  what  idea  they  leave  on  his  mind. 
Still,  in  the  case  of  these  later  victories — sea  fight  and 
victory  meant  about  the  same  thing  with  us  for  long — 
details  are  to  be  got.  We  know  the  number  of  ships 
engaged,  their  order  in  the  line,  the  admirals'  signals, 
the  direction  of  the  wind,  and  so  forth.  By  attending 
to  these,  and  keeping  the  points  of  the  compass  in  mind, 
anyone  with  the  knowledge  of  sea  terms  possessed  by 
six  Englishmen  out  of  ten  can,  by  a  little  patient  worry- 
ing, get  at  some  comprehension  of  what  happened.  In 
the  descriptions  of  the  naval  battles  of  the  seventeenth 
century  this  indispensable  information  is  hardly  ever 
given.  The  admirals  confine  themselves  to  reporting 
that  they  have  met  the  enemy,  and,  by  the  powerful 
working  of  God,  have  adequately  thrashed  him.  Nothing 
is  less  certain  than  the  mere  number  of  ships  engaged, 
their  order  of  sailing  is  never  given,  and  the  general 


War  with  Holland  91 

movements  of  the  fleet  are  only  indicated  in  the  vaguest 
manner. 

There  is  of  course  one  way  in  which  the  difficulty 
can  be  got  over.  The  biographer  or  historian  may  use 
the  {  recipe  for  making  an  epic  poem  '  and  fill  his  battle 
picture  up  with  the  thunder  of  cannon,  flames,  heroic 
valour,  spars  and  corpses  floating  on  the  water,  and  all 
the  other  appropriate  ornaments.  He  may  describe  his 
hero  as  <  riding  up  '  to  the  enemy,  and  tell  how  he 
watched  the  whole  battle  with  an  eagle  eye,  in  ignorance 
of  the  notorious  fact  that  when  two  fleets  are  well 
engaged  no  admiral  could  see  more  than  the  ships 
immediately  around  him.  Perhaps,  however,  we  have 
had  quite  enough  of  this  sort  of  thing.  It  is  better  on 
the  whole  to  say  as  precisely  as  you  can  what  was  done, 
and  when  you  do  not  know,  to  say  that  also. 

One  or  two  things  may  be  asserted  about  these 
battles  with  tolerable  certainty.  They  were  not  con- 
fused scrambles  of  ships  fighting  in  no  order  at  all. 
This  verdict  on  them  rested  mainly  on  the  word  of  a 
Scotch  schoolmaster  of  the  last  century  who  thought  he 
had  discovered  the  advantages  of  '  cutting  the  line.' 
Mr.  Clerk  was  mistaken.  Not  perhaps  as  early  as 
Elizabeth's  time,  but  assuredly  long  before  the  outbreak 
of  the  war  of  1651,  the  Dutch  and  English  seamen  were 
perfectly  well  aware  of  the  advantages  of  fighting  in 
order  and  in  line  ahead — that  is,  with  the  ships  one 
after  the  other,  instead  of  side  by  side,  the  old  order  of 
the  galleys  which  had  been  adhered  to  by  the  chiefs  of 
the  Spanish  Armada.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that  this 
prder  was  not  very  accurately  kept,  and  was  even  some- 
times neglected.     Want  of  practice  in  handling  fleets, 


92  Robert  Blake 

and  the  great  number  of  the  ships,  account  satisfactorily 
enough  for  some  of  these  mistakes,  but  where  the 
proper  order  was  wholly  neglected  it  was  because  the 
land  officers  in  command  of  the  fleets  were  obstinate 
and  foolish  enough  to  fly  in  the  face  of  the  unanimous 
opinion  of  the  seamen.  Monk,  after  he  had  become 
Duke  of  Albemarle,  once  ran  a  round  dozen  ships  on 
the  Galloper  Sands  by  persisting  in  trying  to  carry  a 
large  fleet  up  the  Thames  in  line  abreast.  Under  the 
Commonwealth  no  officer  was  sure  enough  of  his  position 
to  indulge  himself  in  freaks  of  this  kind.  Blake  has 
never  been  proved  to  have  been  guilty  of  undervaluing 
the  opinion  of  his  professional  officers,  and  it  is  safe  to 
conclude  that  he  did  in  every  case  what  we  have  good 
evidence  for  believing  they  would  have  advised  him  to 
do.  When  he  fought  this  first  pitched  battle  of  the 
war  he  had  with  him  Penn  as  vice-admiral,  and  though 
that  officer  was  rather  a  poor  creature  in  many  ways,  he 
was  a  good  seaman. 

The  battle  of  September  28  can  be,  so  to  speak, 
reconstructed  by  whoever  will  remember  that  the  fleets 
did  fight  in  order,  and  will  read  the  account  of  their 
movements  published  by  Whitelocke  with  a  chart.  Its 
incidents  were  almost  as  much  dictated  by  the  form  of 
the  land  as  those  of  any  land  battle.  The  scene  of 
this  and  many  later  engagements  with  the  Dutch  was 
in  that  section  of  the  south-east  coast  of  England  which 
stretches  from  the  South  Foreland  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Stour,  the  boundary  of  Suffolk  and  Essex.  All  along 
this  line  the  land  is  fringed  by  sands.  The  Goodwins 
lie  over  against  the  coast  of  Kent,  from  Pegwell  Bay  to 
the  South  Foreland.     Inside  of  them  is  the  road  known 


War  with  Holland  93 

as  the  Downs.  As  you  sail  to  the  north  and  north-east 
from  this  anchorage,  you  leave  a  score  of  dangerous 
shallows  on  your  left.  Outside,  and  following  the  north- 
easterly bend  of  the  Essex  coast,  are  the  Girdler  and  the 
Long  Sand.  Inside  of  them  are  the  Maplins,  Burrow, 
Buxey,  the  Gunfleet,  and  others.  This  last  stretches 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Colne,  along  the  coast  of  Essex. 
Outside  of  the  Long  Sand  is  the  Kentish  Knock.  Even 
in  the  midst  of  peace,  and  when  these  sands  are  studded 
with  light  ships,  it  is  dangerous  to  navigate  the  waters 
which  lie  over  and  about  them.  In  war  time,  and 
without  warning  lights,  it  was  perilous  in  the  last  ex- 
treme. 

The  danger  was,  however,  less  for  one  combatant 
than  for  the  other.  The  flat  construction  of  the  Dutch 
ships  made  it  easier  for  them  to  manoeuvre  among 
shallows  than  it  was  for  the  sharper  keeled  English 
ships.  It  was  therefore  probably  with  a  distinct  inten- 
tion of  profiting  by  this  advantage — for  the  sake  of 
which  they  sacrificed  so  much  else — that  the  Dutch 
always  tried  to  fight  as  near  the  English  coast  as  they 
could,  and  in  more  than  one  battle,  success  justified 
the  calculation. 

In  pursuance  of  their  ordinary  policy,  the  Dutch 
had  been  cruising  between  Yarmouth  and  the  east  end 
of  Kent  from  at  least  September  14.  On  the  25th 
they  were  seen  at  the  back  of  the  Goodwins,  that 
is  to  say  between  those  sands  and  the  coast  of  France. 
For  this  and  the  two  succeeding  days  the  weather  was 
so  bad  that  the  English  fleet  in  the  Downs  could  not 
put  to  sea.  It  was  calmer  on  the  28th,  and  Blake  sailed 
to  the  northward,  with  the  wind  at  north  of  west.     He 


94  Robert  Blake 

could  calculate  with  certainty  on  finding  the  Dutch  in 
that  direction,  since  it  was  their  object  to  watch  the 
mouth  of  the  Thames,  and  they  would  in  any  case  be 
careful  not  to  entangle  themselves  in  the  Straits  or  cut 
themselves  off  from  their  retreat  home  by  getting  into 
the  Channel.  His  fleet  consisted  of  between  fifty  and 
sixty  sail.  The  '  Resolution '  of  sixty  guns  carried  his 
flag,  since  the  '  James '  had  been  dismasted  in  the  fight 
of  May  19.  Among  the  ships  under  his  command  was 
the  '  Sovereign,'  then  esteemed  the  finest  war-vessel 
afloat,  and  famous  enough  to  deserve  particular  mention. 
She  had  been  built  by  Phineas  Pett,  the  founder  of  that 
family,  and  called  the  i  Sovereign  of  the  Seas.'  Accord- 
ing to  the  custom  of  the  time  she  was  covered  with 
carving  and  gilding,  some  idea  of  which  may  be  formed 
by  looking  at  the  model  still  preserved  at  Greenwich. 
In  spite  of  this  magnificence,  the  '  Sovereign,'  like  many 
other  dandies,  was  a  valiant  fighter,  and  the  Dutch — at 
least,  so  said  the  English  sailors — called  her  the  '  Yellow 
Devil.'  She  outlived  the  Commonwealth,  was  re- 
christened  c  Royal,'  carried  Sir  Ralph  Delaval's  flag  at 
the  great  battle  of  La  Hogue,  and  '  at  length  leaky  and 
defective  herself  with  age,  she  was  laid  up  at  Chatham 
in  order  to  be  rebuilt,'  and  was  there  burnt  on  November 
27,  1696,  after  sixty  years'  good  service. 

At  about  three  in  the  afternoon  of  this  eventful 
September  28,  Blake  sighted  the  Dutch  fleet.  They 
were  in  line,  lying  close  along  the  outer  side  of  the 
Kentish  Knock,  heading  as  it  would  seem  to  the  south. 
This  position  had  obviously  been  assumed  with  the 
intention  of  putting  the  English  fleet  in  a  dilemma. 
With  the  wind  from  north  of  west,  the  Dutch  were  in 


War  with  Holland  95 

no  clanger  of  going  on  the  Sand,  and  would  naturally 
calculate  that  their  enemy  must  either  attack  them  to 
leeward,  in  which  case  he  would  be  open  to  the  danger 
of  having  fire-ships  floated  down  on  him,  or  if  he  did  try 
to  get  to  windward,  would  run  a  serious  risk  of  ground- 
ing on  the  Knock.  When  the  Dutch  were  sighted, 
there  was  a  gap  in  the  English  line.  The  '  Resolution,' 
with  Penn's  flagship  the  '  Sovereign/  the  '  Andrew,' 
and  a  few  others,  had  outsailed  the  rest  of  the  fleet. 
One  of  the  captains  of  this  vanguard  hailed  or  signalled 
for  leave  to  engage,  but  was  ordered  by  Blake  to  wait 
till  the  rest  of  the  fleet  had  come  up.  For  an  hour  the 
enemies  remained  in  sight  of  one  another,  without  firing 
a  shot,  the  English  ships  lying-to  or  beating  to  wind- 
ward, and  the  Dutch  keeping  quiet  to  lee  of  the  bank. 
Their  inaction  seemed  so  surprising  at  the  time,  for 
they  could  easily  have  cut  the  English  Admiral  off  from 
his  supports,  that  it  was  attributed  to  dissensions 
between  the  Dutch  Admirals.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
they  were  acting  on  the  plan  mentioned  above.  During 
this  pause  De  Witt  was  seen  to  shift  his  flag  from  his 
first  ship,  a  vessel  of  forty  guns,  to  an  Indiaman  of  fifty- 
six. 

About  four  o'clock  the  English  line  was  complete, 
and  Blake  bore  down  on  the  enemy.  He  doubtless 
hoisted  the  signal  to  engage,  but  it  is  not  said  what  it 
was,  and  there  was  then  no  general  code.  His  course 
was  directed  to  windward  of  the  Dutch  line,  and  therefore 
between  it  and  the  Kentish  Knock.  A  few  single  guns 
had  already  been  fired  by  the  Dutch,  in  bravado  accord- 
ing to  Whitelocke's  correspondent,  but  probably  to  find 
the  range.     The  *  Resolution '  passed  along  the  Dutch 


g6  Robert  Blake 

line,  which  edged  to  the  southwards  to  avoid  her,  and 
the  following  ships  all  poured  in  their  broadsides  as 
they  went.  Then  the  mishap  hoped  for  by  the  Dutch 
happened.  The  flagships  of  Blake  and  Penn.  the 
'  Sovereign/  the  '  Andrew,'  and  as  it  seems  one  or  two 
others,  got  aground  on  the  Knock.  This  accident  may 
appear  by  no  means  creditable  to  the  seamanship  of 
anybody  concerned,  but  it  is  possible  that  the  risk  was 
run  deliberately  with  the  object  of  keeping  the  weather- 
gage.  The  English  seamen  knew  that  as  they  had  the 
Sand  to  windward  and  not  to  leeward  of  them,  they 
could  get  off  even  if  they  did  touch,  and  in  any  case 
the  grounding  of  the  leading  ships  would  act  as  a 
warning  to  the  rest  of  the  line.  So  it  turned  out ;  the 
vessels  which  had  grounded  soon  freed  themselves,  and 
those  behind,  seeing  what  had  befallen  their  Admirals, 
put  their  helms  up  and  ran  right  down  on  the  Dutch, 
who  were  now  standing  to  the  south.  '  We  fell  back  to 
receive  them,'  says  Whitelocke's  friend, i  and  so  staid  by 
them  till  night  parted  us.' 

This  irritatingly  vague  phrase  contains  all  that  is 
known  of  the  rest  of  the  battle.  It  was  fierce,  and  for 
the  Dutch  disastrous.  The  orders  to  the  English  fleet 
were  to  waste  no  powder  at  long  bowls,  but  to  come  to 
close  quarters,  and  they  were  well  obeyed.  Even  the 
merchantship  men-of-war  were  fought  with  the  utmost 
spirit.  Following  a  practice  which  continued  to  be 
universal  among  continental  seamen  till  Trafalgar,  the 
Dutch  fired  to  dismast.  The  English,  as  they  have 
done  since,  fired  to  hull — to  sink  or  kill.  The  respective 
efficiency  of  these  systems  was  seen  in  the  result.  On 
our  side  the  loss  was  slight — one  captain  and  about 


War  with  Holland  97 

forty  men  only  were  killed,  and  though  many  ships  had 
their  rigging  cut  to  pieces,  none  were  sunk  or  even 
totally  disabled  The  Dutch  lost  several  ships  sent  to 
the  bottom,  and  had  others  cut  down  to  hulks.  One 
carrying  the  flag  of  a  rear-admiral  struck  to  Captain 
Mildmay.  It  was  believed  in  the  English  fleet,  and  not 
without  reason,  that  if  the  early  dusk  of  a  September 
evening  had  not  parted  the  combatants,  the  Dutch 
would  have  been  utterly  destroyed. 

All  night  the  two  fleets  remained  so  close  together 
that  the  lights  of  the  Dutch  could  be  seen  from  the 
English  ships. 

The  night  conies  on,  we  eager  to  pursue 

The  combat  still,  and  they  ashamed  to  leave, 

Till  the  last  streaks  of  dying  day  withdrew, 
And  doubtful  moonlight  did  our  rage  deceive. 

The  verse  might  have  been  written  with  greater 
truth  of  this  than  of  the  scrambling  four  days'  battle  in 
1666.  It  was  thought  that  the  battle  would  be  renewed 
on  the  following  day,  but  when  morning  came  the 
Dutch  were  seen  to  be  six  miles  off  to  the  north-east. 
The  wind  had  shifted  during  the  night,  and  the  Dutch 
now  held  the  weathergage.  They  availed  themselves 
of  it  to  avoid  fighting.  All  the  attempts  of  Blake  to 
bring  them  to  action  were  unsuccessful,  and  on  the 
30th  the  English  saw  them  run  into  Goree.  Finding 
himself  dangerously  near  the  shallows  of  the  Dutch 
coast,  the  English  Admiral  gave  up  the  chase  and 
returned  home. 


98  Robert  Blake 


CHAPTER   VII. 

THE   DUEL   WITH   TROMP. 

The  immediate  effect  of  this  disaster  was  the  restoration 
of  Tromp  to  the  command  of  the  Dutch  fleet.  His 
successors  had  manifestly  not  replaced  him.  Their 
actual  defeat  was  very  much  worse  than  mere  failure  to 
succeed.  If  the  States,  too,  intended  to  continue  the 
war  at  all,  they  had  need  to  exert  themselves.  Within 
a  few  weeks  great  convoys  would  be  ready  to  go  out, 
and  within  a  few  months  others  would  be  coming  home. 
The  task  of  providing  for  the  safety  of  both  fell  on 
Tromp,  and  he  set  about  it  in  his  usual  thoroughgoing 
way.  In  the  course  of  October  he  had  equipped  ninety 
sail,  including  fire-ships,  and  in  November  he  saw  the 
fishing  and  northern  fleets  safe  out  of  the  German  Ocean, 
and  came  south  to  keep  the  Channel  clear  for  the  home- 
coming India  and  Levant  traders. 

The  Council  of  State  presented  him  with  a  very 
favourable  opportunity  for  paying  off  his  scores  with 
Blake.  They  also  had  their  convoys  to  look  after,  and 
had  weakened  the  fleet  in  the  Downs  for  the  service. 
London  had  to  be  supplied  with  coal  for  the  winter, 
and  Penn  was  told  off  to  protect  the  Tyne  colliers. 
Meanwhile  a  quarrel  had  arisen  with  Denmark,  and  a 


The  Duel  with  Tromp  99 

squadron  had  been  detached  to  bring  that  country  to 
reason,  and  see  to  the  due  arrival  of  our  supplies  of 
masts  and  pitch  from  Scandinavia.  Many  of  Blake's 
vessels  were  also  in  need  of  repair,  and  had  been  docked 
at  Chatham  under  the  impression  that  there  would  be 
no  more  sea-fighting  so  late  in  the  year.  When  Tromp 
appeared  off  the  Goodwins  with  his  ninety  sail  on 
November  29  Blake  had  only  forty-two  ships  with  him, 
and  only  twenty  of  these  had  their  full  complement  of 
men  on  board.  The  odds  were  heavy,  but  Blake  had 
confidence  enough  in  himself  and  his  fleet  to  give  battle 
in  spite  of  them.  His  fleet  was  one  in  which  an  admiral 
might  well  trust.  Before  weighing  to  attack  an  enemy 
twice  as  strong,  in  mere  numbers  at  least,  as  himself, 
Blake  called  a  council  of  officers.  That  a  council  of 
war  never  fights  is  a  rule  to  which  the  whole  history 
of  the  Parliamentary  armies  and  navies  is  one  long 
exception.  Their  councils  of  war  always  did  fight. 
The  officers  who  met  in  the  cabin  of  the  (  Triumph '  on 
November  29  came  to  their  usual  decision,  and  the 
forty-two  English  ships  weighed  and  stood  to  sea  to 
attack  Tromp.  It  is  possible  that  their  crews  were 
reinforced  by  volunteers  at  the  last  moment.  The 
Deal  and  Dover  fishermen  had  swarmed  off  in  their 
boats  to  help  Blake  during  the  fight  on  May  19 
when  the  odds  were  three  to  one  against  him,  and 
they  would  not  hang  back  when  they  were  only  two 
to  one. 

The  fleets  met  about  noon,  November  30,  off  Dunge- 
ness  and  fought  till  dark,  which  at  that  season  would  be 
soon  after  five  o'clock.  In  the  course  of  an  afternoon  of 
furious  struggle  the  English  suffered  a  defeat,  but  a  defeat 

h  2 


ioo  Robert  Blake 

which  came  as  near  as  was  possible  to  being  as  good  as 
a  victory.  To  have  fought  Tromp  one  against  two  for 
five  hours,  and  not  to  have  been  utterly  destroyed  was 
honour  enough.  If  it  had  been  possible  to  beat  him 
at  such  odds  the  Dutch  would  not  have  been,  what  they 
undoubtedly  were,  the  bravest  and  most  skilful  enemies 
we  ever  met  at  sea.  The  movements  of  the  two  fleets 
can,  as  is  commonly  the  case,  only  be  guessed  at. 

There  were  many  valiant  things  done  in  this 
battle.  Blake's  flag  was  flying  in  the  *  Triumph.'  The 
'  Resolution '  must  have  been  terribly  mauled  in  the 
battle  of  September  28,  and  have  returned  to  port  to 
make  good  the  damage  done  by  the  Kentish  Knock 
and  the  Dutch  cannon.  Supported  by  the  c  Victory ' 
and  the  '  Vanguard,'  he  was  engaged  for  some  time  with 
a  score  of  the  enemy's  ships,  and  ran  no  small  danger  of 
being  overpowered.  At  last  the  three  ships  were  re- 
lieved by  others,  and  shook  themselves  clear.  As  Blake 
got  away  from  his  immediate  assailants,  he  saw  a  despe- 
rate struggle  going  on  in  another  part  of  the  line.  Two 
English  captains,  Akson  and  Batten,  commanding  the 
'  Garland '  and  the  '  Bonaventure,'  had  resolved  to  haul 
down  Tromp's  flag,  and  manoeuvred  to  lay  their  ships, 
neither  of  them  vessels  of  any  great  size,  alongside  him. 
To  their  glory  and  misfortune  they  succeeded.  They 
grappled  the  '  Brederode,'  and  furiously  attempted  to 
board.  Tromp  defended  the  deck  of  his  flagship  as  he 
always  had  done.  His  secretary  was  shot  dead  by  his 
side.  In  a  few  moments  other  vessels  came  to  his  assist- 
ance, and  the  crews  of  the  '  Garland  '  and  '  Bonaventure' 
had  to  defend  themselves.  Attacked  by  the  new- 
comers, among  whom  was  Evertzen,  the  vice-admiral  of 


The  Duel  with  Trump  'ioi 

Zeeland,  and  still  fastened  by  their  grappling  irons 
to  the  '  Brederode,'  they  had  to  beat  off  swarms  of 
boarders.  This  fight  must  have  been  perfectly  visible  to 
many  of  the  ships  on  both  sides.  None  of  the  vessels 
locked  together  can  have  been  firing.  The  Dutch  would 
be  afraid  of  damaging  one  another,  and  the  English 
were  too  busy  with  their  pikes  and  cutlasses.  An  at- 
tempt was  made  to  relieve  the  two  ships  by  Blake  and 
the  captains  near  him,  but  the  Dutch  crowded  up  to 
cover  their  admiral,  and  while  the  English  flagship  was 
fighting  with  them,  the  '  Garland '  and  the  '  Bonaven- 
ture '  were  at  last  overpowered  by  Tromp.  Akson  and 
Batten  fought  till  their  crews  were  cut  to  pieces. 
The  '  Garland's '  upper  deck  was  blown  up  by  her  cap- 
tain, and  scores  of  Dutchmen  sent  into  the  air  with  it. 
This  desperate  resource  only  averted  the  end  for  a  short 
time.  Tromp  urged  on  his  boarders,  and  at  last  the  two 
vessels  were  captured.  When  darkness  came  Blake 
drew  off  his  fleet  and  retreated  into  the  Thames,  having 
lost,  besides  the  <  Garland  '  and  the  i  Bonaventure,'  three 
ships  sunk. 

So  ended  the  battle  off  the  Ness,  victoriously  for 
Tromp,  but  not  disastrously  for  Blake.  The  Dutchman 
hoisted  his  famous  and  perhaps  legendary  broom  at 
the  mainmast  head  of  his  flagship,  and  sailed  in 
triumph  along  the  south  coast  of  England  to  sweep 
the  Channel.  In  spite  of  this  piece  of  almost  comic 
bravado,  Tromp  can  hardly  have  been  very  proud  of 
his  victory.  At  the  bottom  of  his  heart  he  must  have 
felt  that  if  he  could  do  no  more  with  such  a  supe- 
riority in  numbers  as  he  had  on  November  30,  he 
had  very  little  reason  to  look  forward  with  confidence 


102  Robert  Blake 

to  an  encounter  with  equal  numbers.  It  was  thus  that 
Englishmen  reasoned.  The  reports  of  the  battle  were 
read  with  pride.  The  Council  of  State  thanked  Blake 
for  his  services,  and  began  to  equip  a  fleet  strong  enough 
to  contend  for  the  command  of  the  Channel.  According 
to  the  general  practice  of  the  Long  Parliament,  this  great 
force  was  to  be  put  under  command  of  a  committee. 
Deane,  who  had  been  working  at  Whitehall  or  fighting 
in  Scotland,  was  sent  back  to  his  command  at  sea.  He 
joined  Blake  on  board  the  '  Triumph.'  Monk  was  now 
for  the  first  time  sent  to  serve  as  an  admiral.  In  ad- 
dition to  providing  for  the  command,  the  Council  of 
State  looked  to  the  manning  of  the  fleet.  There  had 
been  some  falling  off  in  the  eagerness  with  which  men 
had  volunteered  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  The 
pressgang  was  a  great  resource,  but  though  efficient,  it 
was  difficult  to  work,  and  if  used  with  severity  was 
likely  to  do  infinite  mischief  to  the  by  no  means 
robust  popularity  of  the  Commonwealth  among  the 
sailors.  Men,  when  they  knew  they  were  hunted,  instinc- 
tively did  their  best  to  escape.  There  were  fights  in 
some  places.  Occasionally  the  pressgang  only  secured 
a  haul  of  useless  landsmen,  who  had  to  be  let  go.  The 
local  authorities  in  the  seaports  were  often  themselves 
shipowners,  and  it  was  hard  to  make  them  deprive 
themselves  of  sailors  in  order  to  man  the  fleet  of  the 
State.  Colonel  Overton,  governor  of  Hull,  found  it 
necessary  to  threaten  to  send  the  Mayor  and  constables 
of  the  town  to  serve  against  the  Dutch  themselves,  if 
they  did  not  show  more  zeal  to  forward  the  press. 
Without  neglecting  this  approved  method  of  making 
up  crews,  the  Council  of  State  wisely   decided  to  see 


The  Duel  with  Tromp  103 

what  could  be  done  by  making  the  service  more  popular. 
It  improved  the  regulations  for  the  distribution  of  prize- 
money,  gave  volunteers  advances  on  their  pay,  and 
enabled  them  to  set  aside  a  part  for  the  use  of  their 
families  during  their  absence.  By  force,  or  by  persua- 
sion, the  great  fleet  was  manned,  and  by  the  beginning 
of  February  Blake,  Deane,  and  Monk,  helped  by  Penn, 
Lawson,  and  many  other  seamen,  were  off  Portland  with 
seventy  sail. 

They  had  no  need  to  go  in  search  of  Tromp,  who 
must  needs  bring  his  merchant  ships  right  past  them. 
On  Friday,  February  18,  he  was  seen  coming  up  the 
Channel  with  a  huge  convoy  of  at  least  150  sail  under 
his  wing.  His  war-ships  were  between  them  and  the 
English,  and  were  well  together.  The  wind  was  in 
favour  of  the  Dutch.  When  Blake  caught  sight  of  his 
enemy,  his  own  line  was  not  yet  formed.  His  squadron, 
the  Bed,  was  with  him,  but  the  White  was  far  off  to  the 
eastward,  and  the  Blue  was  at  some  distance  to. the  west. 
As  in  the  case  of  the  fight  off  Dungeness,  Blake  engaged 
superior  numbers  with  something  even  like  rashness. 
Tromp,  who  had  his  fleet  in  hand  and  the  wind  in  his 
favour,  would  naturally  take  the  initiative,  and  seize 
upon  an  opportunity  to  crush  his  enemy  in  detail,  but 
no  attempt  was  made  to  avoid  him  by  the  English 
admirals.  Deane  was  on  board  the  '  Triumph  '  with 
Blake,  and  the  two,  supported  by  barely  a  dozen  ships, 
engaged  the  whole  force  of  the  Dutch.  On  this  occasion 
the  adventure  was  justified  by  the  results,  but  the  iso- 
lated ships  suffered  very  severely.  The  fight  began  at  8 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  several  hours  passed  before 
they   received  any    support.     Nothing  gives  a  higher 


104  Robert  Blake 

opinion  of  the  obstinate  courage  of  the  seamen  of  the 
Commonwealth,  than  that  this  handful  of  vessels  should 
have  borne  the  brunt  of  a  struggle  with  Tromp's  superior 
numbers  for  so  long  without  being  completely  crushed. 
They  were  shattered  in  hull  and  rigging,  some  of  them 
so  severely  that  they  had  to  crawl  into  Portsmouth  that 
night  as  best  they  could,  and  the  loss  of  life  was  great. 
On  board  the  '  Triumph  '  a  hundred  men  fell.  Her  cap- 
tain, Ball,  and  Mr.  Sparrow,  the  Admiral's  secretary,  were 
killed  on  her  deck.  In  the  heat  of  the  fight  Blake  was 
wounded  in  the  thigh  by  a  splinter,  which  also  tore  a 
piece  out  of  the  breeches  of  his  colleague,  Deane.  He 
was  spared  to  die  by  the  side  of  Monk  four  months 
later  in  the  great  battle  in  June.  But  though  the 
'  Triumph's '  masts  were  down,  or  going  over  her  side, 
though  her  crew  was  thinned  and  hull  shattered,  her 
flag  was  still  flying  when  Penn,  Lawson,  and  Monk  did 
at  last  struggle  up  against  the  wind  into  the  line  of 
battle.  The  last  hours  of  daylight  were  spent  in  a 
general  engagement,  and  when  darkness  came  on  the 
fleets  separated,  Tromp  to  look  after  his  convoy,  and  the 
English  to  watch  him. 

Blake  and  his  flagship  were  both  in  very  ill  case, 
but  the  '  Triumph  '  remained  with  the  fleet,  though  too 
badly  crippled  to  take  part  in  the  rest  of  this  '  very 
stupendous '  action.  The  superlative  is  Clarendon's. 
During  the  night  the  two  fleets  continued  working 
slowly  along  the  Channel  towards  the  Straits  of  Dover, 
and  on  Saturday  morning  the  struggle  began  again,  to 
last  all  day,  and  to  be  renewed  on  Sunday.  On  the 
second  day  the  English  fleet  had  the  wind,  and  pressed 
in  to   pierce  the   Dutch   line   and   reach  the  eagerly 


The  Duel  with  Tromp  105 

desired  merchant  ships.  These  last  made  all  the  haste 
they  could  along  the  French  coast,  huddled  together 
and  looking  anxiously  back  at  the  fight  going  on  behind 
them.  Tromp  did  his  duty  splendidly,  and  was  man- 
fully supported  by  De  Euyter  and  Evertzen,  but  before 
night  fell  the  advantage  had  begun  to  lean  to  the 
English  side.  One  Dutch  ship  of  more  than  1,300  tons, 
carrying  the  flag  of  a  rear-admiral,  struck  to  Captain 
John  Lawson,  of  the  '  Fairfax.'  This  valiant  Yorkshire- 
man,  who  had  fought  his  way  up  from  before  the  mast 
of  a  collier,  and  who  '  was  indeed  of  all  the  men  of  that 
time,  and  of  that  extraction  and  education,  incomparably 
the  modestest  and  the  wisest  man,  and  most  worthy 
man  to  be  confided  in,'  was  the  hero  of  the  day  in  the 
English  fleet,  but  he  was  thoroughly  backed  up.  So 
clearly  was  the  fight  going  against  the  Dutch,  that  the 
ships  of  the  convoy  began  to  throw  cargo  overboard  to 
lighten  themselves  for  flight. 

Still,  as  Penn,  remembering  these  three  days  after- 
wards, told  the  Duke  of  York,  a  Dutchman  is  never  so 
dangerous  as  when  he  is  desperate.  When  Sunday 
came,  Tromp  was  seen  making  for  the  shallows  of  the 
French  coast  at  Calais,  with  his  fleet  in  a  half-moon, 
and  the  convoy  in  its  arms.  The  third  battle  was  as 
savage  as  the  first  and  second,  but  more  decisive. 
Before  night  several  Dutch  men-of-war  had  been  sunk 
or  taken.  Some  of  the  captains  are  said  to  have  failed 
their  indomitable  admiral  in  his  great  need.  At  last 
Penn,  with  a  squadron  of  frigates,  burst  through  the 
broken  line  and  captured  some  fifty  merchant  ships. 
The  English  sailors  passed  Sunday  night  preparing  for 
great  captures  on  the  morrow.    They  were  disappointed. 


106  Robert  Blake 

Tromp  saw  that  he  must  use  the  hours  of  darkness  if 
he  wished  to  save  his  charge.  At  sundown  he  anchored 
in  the  shallows  near  Calais,  and  then  sent  orders  to  his 
captains  to  take  advantage  of  the  turn  of  the  tide,  and 
make  the  best  of  their  way  home.  He  was  obeyed  by 
men  who  knew  every  inch  of  the  coast,  the  exact  force 
of  every  current,  and  the  value  of  every  puff  of  wind. 
On  Monday  morning  the  winds  and  the  tide  had  carried 
the  Dutch  beyond  reach,  and  Tromp  led  the  bulk  of  his 
convoy  and  his  battered  fleet  into  the  Texel  after  all. 

Very  shortly,  if  not  immediately  after  the  three 
days'  battle,  Blake  was  compelled  by  his  wound  to  give 
up  active  service  for  the  present.  He  had  caught  cold 
in  his  wound  on  going  ashore,  and  fell  seriously  ill  at 
Portsmouth.  Here  he  lay  until  June,  attended  by 
Dr.  Daniel  Whistler,  who  had  been  sent  down  from 
London  to  look  after  the  sick  and  wounded  seamen.  In 
itself  the  wound  was  not  serious.  The  danger  came 
from  the  cold  and  its  attendant  fever.  Still,  the 
Admiral's  life  does  not  seem  ever  to  have  been  in  danger. 
Dr.  Daniel  Whistler  found  him  mending  in  March,  and 
was  only  doubtful  of  the  issue  on  account  of  his  age. 
c  De  senibus  non  est  temere  sperandum  '  was  the  maxim 
he  quoted  to  Sir  Harry  Vane,  which  is  one  of  the  innu- 
merable proofs  of  how  greatly  the  standard  of  old  age 
has  risen  during  the  last  two  centuries.  Blake  was 
only  fifty-four  when  the  doctor  wrote  of  him  as  a  man 
of  such  advanced  age  that  any  accident  might  be  ex- 
pected to  be  fatal. 

Blake's  reputation  for  humanity  to  his  men  permits 
the  supposition  that  his  own  convalescence  was  darkened 
by  knowing  that  he  was   surrounded  by  hundreds   of 


The  Duel  with  Tromp  107 

sick  and  wounded  seamen  who  were  miserably  dying 
from  want  of  the  most  necessary  help,  or  slowly  recover- 
ing in  spite  of  the  most  adverse  circumstances.  The 
Government  was  little  if  at  all  to  blame  for  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  seamen.  Humanity  apart — and  the  Common- 
wealth men  were  far  from  wanting  in  kindly  sympathy 
for  their  humbler  servants — there  was  every  motive  of 
interest  to  make  them  anxious  to  help  the  sailors. 
What  the  Government  could  do  it  did.  Doctors  were 
sent  from  London  to  organise  impromptu  hospitals. 
Food,  medicine,  and  clothes  were  supplied  as  abundantly 
as  was  possible.  Still,  with  all  its  zeal,  the  Admiralty 
Committee  was  able  to  do  miserably  little.  There  was, 
in  fact,  no  organisation  in  existence  to  meet  such  a 
crisis.  Doctors  might  be  sent,  and  food,  and  medicine, 
but  the  medical  men  had  no  staff  of  nurses  to  obey 
their  orders,  no  proper  hospital  to  put  their  patients 
into,  no  one  to  help  them  in  collecting  and  distributing 
the  supplies  needed.  In  the  letter  which  reports  the 
recovery  of  Blake,  Dr.  Whistler  draws  a  shocking 
picture  of  the  state  of  the  wounded.  One  after  another 
he  enumerates  the  things  which  might  be  avoided  if 
only  c  some  capacious  place,  with  good  air,  water,  and 
convenience  of  landing  were  procured.'  If  such  a  thing 
existed  it  would  not  be  necessary  to  leave  the  men  long 
exposed  before  they  could  be  received  anywhere  ;  they 
would  not  lie  long  in  private  houses  before  the  surgeons 
saw  them,  in  want  of  medicine  and  linen.  It  would  be 
possible  to  feed  them.  From  all  which  it  would  appear 
that  the  sick  and  wounded  often  lay  for  days  starving 
in  garrets  at  the  mercy  of  harpies  who  looked  upon 
them  as  a  mere  means  of  making  money.    '  The  want  of 


io8  Robert  Blake 

linen  and  medicines,  the  difficulties  of  diet  and  nursing, 
the  thronging  of  weak  men  into  poor  stifling  houses, 
and  the  temptations  to  drink  in  victualling  houses  that 
have  no  other  but  strong  drink,  here  where  the  water 
is  brackish,'  could  all  be  avoided  if  only  there  was  a 
hospital.  But  there  was  none,  and  the  utmost  exertions 
of  the  Admiralty  Commissioners  could  at  best  only 
make  a  very  wretched  state  of  things  a  little  less  bad 
than  it  might  have  been.  Something  was  done  to  pro- 
vide for  the  future.  The  Commissioners  began  to  talk 
at  least  of  securing  Porchester  Castle  as  a  hospital,  and 
a  beginning  was  made  in  the  formation  of  a  thoroughly 
efficient  medical  service. 

While  Blake  was  still  too  weak  to  resume  his  com- 
mand, an  event  occurred  to  which  the  speculations  of 
biographers  have  given  a  quite  fictitious  importance 
in  his  life.  On  April  19,  1653,  Cromwell  turned  the 
Rump  into  the  streets,  and  put  the  key  of  the  House 
of  Commons  into  his  pocket.  It  is  of  course  always 
interesting  to  know  of  any  man  of  that  generation 
whether  he  was  friend  or  enemy  to  Oliver  Cromwell.  The 
question  suggests  itself  in  regard  to  Blake  as  well  as 
others.  If  it  is  to  be  answered  by  the  help  of  known 
facts  only,  there  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  Admiral's 
opinions.  He  would  seem,  by  his  whole  conduct  during 
the  last  four  years  of  his  life,  to  have  thought  that  the 
Protector  was  the  man  most  capable  of  governing,  and 
the  fittest  to  be  obeyed.  From  the  first  he  served  the 
Protectorate  loyally.  Blake  never  fell  into  opposition, 
with  Lambert,  Ludlow,  or  Sir  Harry  Vane  ;  he  never 
intrigued  with  the  Royalists  like  Penn  or  Venables; 
he    was  never  found  acting  with  unruly  fanatics  like 


The  Duel  with  Tromp  109 

Lawson.  Whether  in  civil  employment  on  shore,  or  in 
command  at  sea,  he  was  always  the  trustworthy  servant 
of  the  new  ruler.  There  is  no  jot  or  tittle  of  direct 
evidence  that  he  ever  doubted  the  right  of  Cromwell  to 
govern. 

With  his  recorded  actions  on  one  side,  and  no  proof 
of  his  private  feelings  on  the  other,  it  would  seem  to 
be  the  simplest  thing  to  believe  that  he  agreed  with 
Milton  in  accepting  Cromwell's  government,  not  as  a 
mere  necessity,  but  with  loyalty.  It  has,  however,  been 
a  commonplace  that  he  was  not  the  Protector's  friend. 
One  biographer  after  another  has  undertaken  to  tell 
what  he  really  felt  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart ;  and 
however  much  they  may  differ  in  their  explanations, 
there  is  one  point  on  which  they  all  agree.  It  is  that 
Blake's  convictions  and  his  conduct  were  in  flagrant 
contradiction  with  one  another.  He  has  been  supposed 
to  have  disapproved  of  the  execution  of  the  King,  or  to 
have  regretted  the  fall  of  the  monarchy,  or  to  have 
secretly  bewailed  the  ruin  of  the  '  liberty '  which 
notoriously  flourished  under  the  Rump.  While  he  was 
protesting  against  these  things  'in  foro  interno,' 
according  to  the  theories,  he  was  manifestly  helping  to 
do  every  one  of  them,  or  to  maintain  them  when  done. 
He  not  only  made  no  open  protest  against  the  execution 
of  Charles,  but  he  took  his  place  in  the  navy  commission 
within  a  few  days  after  the  King's  head  was  off,  which 
he  could  certainly  not  have  done  at  such  a  crisis  if  the 
Commonwealth  had  had  the  slightest  reason  for  doubt- 
ing his  loyalty  to  its  cause.  If  he  did  not  consciously 
fight  to  upset  the  monarchy,  he  served  the  Govern- 
ments which  were  established  on  its  ruins.    For  the  rest, 


no  Robert  Blake 

when  the  Civil  War  began  there  was  no  man  in  England 
who  dreamt  he  was  about  to  do  more  than  try  to  confine 
the  King  within  the  limits  of  his  prerogative.  If  Blake 
held  the  cause  of  liberty  dear,  he  certainly  moved 
neither  hand  nor  foot  to  show  that  he  believed  it  to 
be  bound  up  with  the  continued  rule  of  the  ragged 
remnant  of  the  Long  Parliament. 

Biographers  have  made  ingenious  attempts  to 
reconcile  the  apparent  discrepancies  in  Blake's  conduct. 
Like  the  killer  of  giants,  they  made  their  difficulties 
first,  and  then  removed  them.  The  method  is  simple. 
He  is  supposed  to  have  felt  that  he  was  bound  to  serve 
his  country,  however  little  he  approved  of  its  Govern- 
ment. In  modern  times  this  would  be  a  sufficient 
explanation  of  the  conduct  of  a  French  Legitimist  who 
should  hold  a  commission  from  the  Eepublic.  It  would 
have  looked  to  an  Englishman  of  the  seventeenth 
century  very  like  a  Jesuitical  excuse  for  being  a  coward 
and  a  traitor.  Neither  the  Eoyalist  nor  the  Parliamen- 
tarian would  have  dreamt  of  distinguishing  between  his 
cause  and  the  cause  of  England  j  they  were  one  and 
the  same  thing.  When  revolutions  had  begun  to  make 
men  supple,  officers  were  found  to  serve  the  ruling 
powers,  while  they  were  secretly  sending  offers  of 
devotion  to  the  King  de  jure ;  but  they  hid  their  conduct, 
and  when  it  was  discovered  the  world  had  a  rough 
name  for  it.  Nothing  of  the  sort  can  be  proved  against 
Blake.  Until  it  is,  he  is  entitled  to  be  considered  an 
honest  man,  which  in  the  school  he  was  trained  in, 
meant  that  he  fought  for  no  cause  in  which  he  did  not 
believe.  If  he  had  disapproved  of  the  execution  of  the 
King  he  would  have  refused  to  serve  his  slayers.     If, 


The  Duel  with  Tromp  hi 

like  Fairfax,  he  had  been  shocked  by  the  execution,  and 
frightened  at  its  possible  consequences,  he  also  would 
have  taken  the  first  opportunity  to  retire  to  his  estate. 
If  he  had  been  a  republican  of  the  Vane  stamp,  he  would 
have  declined  to  obey  Cromwell.  Even  if  he  could  not 
honourably  retire  during  the  Dutch  war,  nothing  com- 
pelled him  to  command  the  Protector's  fleet  in  the 
Mediterranean,  or  to  direct  that  gigantic  buccaneering 
enterprise,  the  attack  on  Spain. 

On  the  supposition  that  he  was  an  honest  man 
Blake's  conduct  is  perfectly  consistent,  and  needs  no 
explanation.  He  fought  for  the  Parliament  as  a  Puritan, 
he  approved  of  the  King's  execution,  because  like  many 
others  he  saw  that  Charles  could  not  be  trusted  to 
accept  the  consequences  of  defeat,  and  because  he,  too, 
considered  his  sovereign  guilty  of  treason  to  his  office, 
and  therefore  deserving  of  death.  He  accepted  the 
Protectorate  because  he  believed  that  Oliver  Cromwell 
could  be  better  trusted  with  the  Puritan  cause,  which  was 
also  in  his  eyes  the  cause  of  England,  than  the  worn-out 
remnant  of  the  Long  Parliament  which  was  trying  by 
providing  for  the  re-election  of  certain  members,  and  so 
forth,  to  effect  a  usurpation  every  whit  as  contrary  to 
the  spirit  of  the  English  constitution  as  anything  done 
by  the  army.  Merely  as  a  fighting  man,  his  sympathies 
would  be  with  the  great  soldier  as  against  a  handful  of 
lawyers  and  pedants.  There  is  no  evidence  on  the  point, 
but  it  is  far  from  unlikely  that  Blake  knew  more  or  less 
wliat  was  to  happen  in  April.  He  was  not  one  of  the 
men  who  were  by  Cromwell's  side  throughout  the  war, 
but  their  acquaintance  was  of  long  standing.  They  had 
met  in  the  West  during  the  campaign  after  Naseby. 


H2  Robert  Blake 

The  offer  of  a  major-general's  command  in  Ireland  showed 
that  the  future  Protector  knew  and  trusted  him.  At 
Whitehall  and  in  the  Downs  they  had  worked  together. 
Blake  cannot  have  been  ignorant  of  Cromwell's  decision 
to  force  on  some  settlement  of  the  nation,  nor  can  he 
have  been  blind  to  what  was  patent  enough  to  the  rest 
of  the  world — the  extreme  likelihood  of  some  action  by 
the  army  against  the  Rump.  As  he  neither  tried  to 
oppose  it  nor  showed  any  displeasure  when  it  was  done, 
he  must  be  supposed  to  have  accepted  it  as  inevitable. 

The  adhesion  of  the  fleet  to  Cromwell  was  expressed 
by  Monk  and  Deane,  who  were  with  the  ships  at  Spit- 
head.  One  of  the  stock  stories  about  Blake  is  that  at 
this  crisis  he  told  the  seamen  they  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  form  of  government,  but  were  there  to  keep 
foreigners  from  fooling  us.  Something  of  the  sort  he 
may  probably  have  said  to  cut  short  dangerous  talk, 
but  it  can  hardly  have  been  at  a  time  when  he  seems 
to  have  been  confined  to  his  bed.  He  was  able  to  take 
only  a  very  small  share  in  the  rest  of  the  Dutch  war. 
Towards  the  end  of  May  he  returned  to  active  service, 
and  took  command  of  the  ships  fitting  out  in  the 
Thames,  but  the  fleet  at  sea  was  led  by  Monk  and 
Deane.  On  June  2  these  Admirals  brought  Tromp  to 
action  off  the  Gable,  and  defeated  him.  In  the  heat  of 
the  battle  Deane  fell,  cut  in  two  by  a  cannon  shot,  and 
Monk,  with  all  his  usual  stolid  courage,  threw  his  mantle 
over  the  mutilated  body  of  his  colleague,  and  continued 
coolly  to  direct  the  fight.  Blake  had  hurried  out  his 
squadron  of  eighteen  sail  on  hearing  that  an  engage- 
ment was  pending,  but  he  did  not  join  until  the  morning 
of  June  3,  in  time  to  share  in  the  pursuit  of  Tromp 


The  Duel  with  Tromp  113 

along  the  coast  of  Flanders.  The  battle  was  not  his 
battle,  and  it  was  the  last  in  which  he  took  even  a 
subordinate  part  in  this  war.  His  illness  had  been 
only  half  cured  when  he  came  back  to  duty,  and 
returned  upon  him  amid  the  fatigues  of  cruising  with 
such  violence,  that  he  was  compelled  to  resign  his 
command.  He  landed  at  Walderswick  on  July  5,  and 
left  Monk,  Penn,  and  Lawson  to  end  the  Dutch  war. 


1 1 4  Rober t  Blake 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

IN   THE   MEDITERRANEAN. 

Blake  took  at  least  a  nominal  part  in  the  administrative 
work  of  Cromwell's  Government.  He  was  one  of  the 
members  of  the  Little  or  Barebones  Parliament,  and 
a  commissioner  for  purging  the  Church  of  ignorant, 
scandalous,  and  inefficient  ministers.  There  is  no  evi- 
dence and  no  probability  that  he  was  an  active  member 
of  these  bodies.  The  ignorant,  scandalous,  and  inefficient 
clergy  of  Somersetshire  can  hardly  have  suffered  much 
from  him  during  his  sick  leave  at  Bridgewater,  even  if  he 
went  there,  and  by  the  end  of  September  he  was  back 
on  his  proper  element.  His  name  would  appear  in  the 
Parliament  and  on  the  commission  simply  because  it 
was  Cromwell's  obvious  interest  to  include  the  greatest 
possible  number  of  Englishmen  of  distinction  among 
the  open  supporters  of  his  Government. 

His  appointment  as  one  of  the  commissioners  of 
the  navy  was  undoubtedly  more  than  a  matter  of  form. 
By  this  time  he  must  have  possessed  a  wider  knowledge 
of  naval  affairs  than  any  living  Englishman.  If  he 
had  not  the  seamanship  of  Lawson,  Penn,  or  Stayner,  he 
had,  what  they  had  not,  a  long  familiarity  with  the 
administration  of  the  service.     Still,  even  in  his  own 


In  the  Mediterranean  115 

line,  it  was  as  admiral  at  sea  that  lie  was  employed. 
Prom  the  end  of  1654  till  his  death  in  August  1657, 
he  was  cruising  incessantly.  The  duties  of  his  office 
were  varied  enough.  Like  so  many  of  his  successors, 
and  not  a  few  of  the  naval  officers  even  of  to-day,  he  had 
far  more  to  do  than  merely  look  after  the  discipline  of  his 
squadron  and  fight  on  occasion.  He  had  to  negotiate 
with  foreign  princes,  and  co-operate  in  carrying  out  the 
policy  of  his  Government,  acting  on  secret  and  often 
contingent  instructions,  choosing  on  his  own  responsi- 
bility the  time  and  means  for  attaining  the  end  imposed 
on  him  by  Cromwell. 

In  the  earlier  part  of  1654  he  was  engaged  in  the 
Channel.  The  Dutch  war  was  at  an  end,  but  there 
was  plenty  to  do  in  enforcing  the  Navigation  Act,  which 
forbade  the  employment  of  Dutch  vessels  in  the  English 
carrying  trade.  Then,  too,  there  were  those  familiar  pests, 
the  privateers  of  Dunkerque  and  St.  Maloes.  At  the 
present  moment  they  were  sure  to  be  particularly  active. 
Cromwell's  Government  was  in  a  state  of  active,  though 
unavowed  hostility,  both  to  France  and  Spain.  During 
the  summer  of  1654  a  great  armament  was  preparing 
in  England,  and  as  yet  there  was  some  doubt  as  to  its 
destination.  The  French  suspected  that  it  was  designed 
against  them,  and  especially  against  the  Duke  of  Guise, 
who  was  preparing  for  that  astounding  expedition  of 
his  to  Naples.  The  Spaniards  believed  that  it  was 
meant  for  the  West  Indies.  They  were  right  and,  little 
credit  to  their  sagacity  either,  for  they  had  fair  warning. 
Cromwell  had  already  demanded  free  trade  with  America, 
and  the  exemption  of  Englishmen  from  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  Inquisition,  and  had  received  the  well-known 

1  2 


n6  Robert  Blake 

answer  from  Don  Alonso  de  Cardenas,  '  My  master 
has  but  two  eyes,  and  you  ask  him  for  both.'  The 
expedition  of  Venables  and  Penn  to  the  West  Indies, 
and  the  entry  of  Blake  into  the  Mediterranean  were  the 
Protector's  countercheck-quarrelsome  to  Don  Alonso's 
quip-courteous. 

In  deciding  to  put  out  his  Catholic  Majesty's  eyes, 
Cromwell  was  doing  a  thoroughly  popular  thing.  His 
enemies,  after  the  Eestoration,  and  his  critics  since, 
have  accused  him  of  committing  a  great  blunder  in  this 
attack  on  Spain,  on  the  ground  that  he  was  helping  on 
the  advance  of  the  French  power.  Both  forget  that 
the  Protector  took  guarantees.  The  possession  of  Dun- 
kerque  and  Mardyk  would  have  enabled  a  Government 
directed  with  half  his  ability  and  courage  to  stop  any 
French  attack  on  the  Low  Countries  easily.  When 
the  two  expeditions  sailed,  Englishmen  were  more  con- 
cerned in  trying  to  obtain  the  right  of  trade  to  the 
West  Indies,  and  in  chaining  up  the  Inquisition,  than  in 
quarrelling  against  France,  which  was  still  torn  by  the 
war  of  the  Fronde.  The  trade  question  was  and  re- 
mained a  standing  cause  of  quarrel  which  flamed  up  a 
century  later  into  the  too  notorious  war  of  Jenkins'  ear. 
The  Inquisition  was  already  in  a  comparatively  harmless 
state,  but  it  was  still  capable  of  mischief,  and  the 
memory  of  its  former  vigour  was  lively.  English 
skippers  and  even  residents  in  Spanish  towns  got  on, 
for  the  most  part,  well  enough  with  the  natives,  but 
every  now  and  then  the  Holy  Office  would  seize  on  one 
of  them  for  some  real  or  imaginary  attempt  at  prosely- 
tism,  and  then  their  case  was  evil  indeed.  A  brother 
of  Admiral  Penn's,  settled  as  a  merchant  at  Seville,  was 


In  the  Mediterranean  117 

imprisoned  and  ruined  for  being  so  ill-advised  as  to  marry 
a  Spanish  woman.  Penn  took  a  limited  revenge  by 
grievously  ill-treating  an  unlucky  Spanish  gentleman 
whom  he  found  in  a  Royalist  prize.  To  give  the  same 
answer  to  the  Inquisition  on  a  much  larger  scale  would 
have  greatly  pleased  the  seamen,  all  the  more  that  it 
could  so  easily  be  combined  with  the  seizure  of  West 
Indian  islands,  and  the  capture  of  Plate  ships  whereof 
the  sailor  dreamt. 

Two  expeditions  left  England  about  the  same  time 
to  attack  Spain.  Penn  and  Venables  sailed  for  the 
West  Indies  with  six  thousand  soldiers,  Blake  left 
about  the  same  time  for  the  Straits  with  five-and-twenty 
sail.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  beautiful  irregularity 
of  people's  ideas  as  to  international  relations  in  those 
times  that  Blake  had  no  orders  to  make  a  general  attack 
on  Spain.  By  a  convenient  extension  of  the  good  old 
principle  c  There  is  no  peace  beyond  the  line,'  Cromwell 
felt  justified  in  making  a  limited  war.  He  resolved  to 
attack  so  much  of  Spain  as  was  trade  with  the  West 
Indies,  and  no  more.  For  the  rest,  nothing  was  to  be  done 
till  news  came  from  Penn  and  Venables — nothing  at  least 
which  could  frighten  the  Spaniard  into  stopping  the 
Plate  fleet.  In  the  meantime  there  was  plenty  for  the 
squadron  to  do. 

In  the  first  place  there  was  a  settlement  to  be  made 
with  the  Italian  prince  who  had  harboured  Rupert,  and 
then  there  were  the  Barbary  pirates  to  be  argued  with. 
During  the  early  months  of  1655  Blake  was  on  the 
coast  of  Italy  and  Sicily,  enforcing  the  arguments  of 
diplomatists  by  a  timely  display  of  force.  That  a  satis- 
factory arrangement  was  made  is  certain,  but  there  is 


n8  Robert  Blake 

less  reason  for  believing  that  it  was  done  in  the  pleasant 
way  reported  by  tradition.  According  to  this  authority, 
which  is  always  so  much  more  agreeable  than  trust- 
worthy, Blake  first  forced  the  Duke  of  Tuscany  to  pay 
a  handsome  sum  by  threatening  to  bombard  Leghorn, 
and  then  did  a  thing  infinitely  pleasing  to  the  English 
mind  in  its  then  unregenerate  condition.  The  Duke 
excused  himself  from  paying  all  he  was  asked  for,  on  the 
ground  that  many  of  Kupert's  prizes  had  been  sold  in  the 
Papal  States.  Blake,  nothing  loth,  sailed  for  CivitaVecchia, 
and  threatened  to  come  up  to  Rome  itself  if  sixty  thou- 
sand ducats  were  not  paid,  and  that  speedily.  Hereupon, 
in  much  trepidation,  the  Pope  and  Cardinals  found  the 
money,  the  only  bullion  ever  sent  from  the  Eternal  City 
to  England  to  counterbalance  the  vast  sums  carried  in 
the  opposite  direction.  The  modesty  of  the  story  is  in 
its  favour,  for  if  tradition  did  put  her  hand  to  making 
it,  there  seems  no  reason  why  she  should  have  stopped 
there.  It  would  have  been  just  as  easy  for  her  to  repre- 
sent Blake  as  having  treated  the  Pope,  or  at  least  a 
Cardinal,  as  Amyas  Leigh  did  the  Bishop  of  Carthagena. 
Whether  the  English  Admiral  schooled  the  Italian 
princes  precisely  in  this  fashion  or  not,  his  mere  presence 
on  their  coasts,  with  a  fleet  manifestly  capable  of  sweeping 
the  Mediterranean,  was  a  useful  lesson.  During  the 
Dutch  war,  a  handful  of  English  ships  under  the  com- 
mand of  Captain  Badiley  had  been  blockaded  by  Van 
Galen  in  Leghorn,  and  when  they  had  been  irritated 
into  recapturing  the  '  Phoenix '  from  the  Hollanders  by  a 
very  dashing  piece  of  cutting  out,  the  Duke  had  com- 
pelled them  to  put  to  sea,  where  they  were  overpowered 
by    numbers.     Badiley   had    unquestionably   infringed 


In  the  Mediterranean  119 

the  neutrality  of  the  Tuscan  port,  but  not  until  the 
Dutch  had  been  allowed  to  do  so.  The  Italian  princes 
believed  the  States  to  be  the  strongest  of  the  sea  powers, 
and  it  was  part  of  Cromwell's  vigorous  foreign  policy  to 
disabuse  them.  This  had  been  effected  by  the  cruise  of 
Blake's  squadron. 

From  the  coast  of  Tuscany,  the  Romagna,  and  Naples, 
through  waters  which  were  to  be  familiar  enough  with 
the  red,  white,  and  blue  ensigns  in  future  days,  Blake 
proceeded  to  the  coast  of  Sicily.  Here,  although  he 
well  knew  that  the  ultimate  object  of  his  cruise  was  an 
attack  on  Spain,  he  had  no  scruple  in  applying  to  the 
Spanish  Viceroys,  who  still  ruled,  and  for  half  a  century 
were  to  rule  over  the  island,  for  leave  to  re  victual  his 
squadron,  on  the  ground  of  the  friendly  relations  of  the 
two  countries,  and  indeed  the  work  immediately  on  hand 
touched  the  Italians  and  Spaniards  as  nearly  as  the 
English.  He  was  about  to  proceed  against  the  Barbary 
pirates  who  were  hostes  humani  generis,  and  particularly 
the  foes  of  the  peoples  of  the  Mediterranean  shore. 
Ever  since  Barbarossa,  the  renegade,  had  founded  the 
great  piratical  power  of  Algiers,  the  towns  of  the  Barbary 
coast,  from  Tripoli  to  Sallee,  had  been  sending  out 
swarms  of  these  skimmers  of  the  waves.  A  horde  of 
renegades,  owing  a  nominal  obedience  to  the  Sultan, 
came  forth  every  summer  in  light-built  craft,  swift  under 
sail  and  easy  to  row,  crowded  with  fighting  men  and 
slaves  for  the  oar.  The  most  renowned  of  these  leaders 
were  Christian  renegades.  Barbarossa  and  his  brother 
were  Calabrians,  and  their  successors  had  been  as  them- 
selves. In  the  early  seventeenth  century  two  English- 
men, Sir  Francis  Verney,  a  Buckinghamshire  squire,  and 


120  Robert  Blake 

a  deserter  from  the  navy  named  Ward,  had  been  con- 
spicuous among  the  pirate  chiefs.  They  and  their  like 
not  only  plundered  ships,  but  made  forays  on  the  coasts 
of  Spain  and  Italy  in  search  of  slaves,  the  most  valuable 
form  of  booty.  The  exiled  Moriscoes  delighted  to  show 
them  the  way  to  the  least  defensible  points  of  Andalusia 
and  Valencia.  Cervantes,  who,  as  all  men  know,  had  him- 
self suffered  a  long  captivity  ;  the  lesser  Spanish  story 
writers ;  the  authors  of  the  '  Novelas  de  Picaros  ;  '  and 
Le  Sage,  all  use  capture  and  imprisonment  among  the 
Barbary  pirates  as  familiar  incidents  in  a  tale  of  adven- 
ture. To  this  day,  when  a  Spaniard  wishes  to  warn  you 
to  be  on  the  look-out  for  squalls,  he  says  with  solemn 
gaze,  '  Hay  Moros  por  la  costa ' — the  Moors  are  on  the 
coast.  Verney,  Ward,  and  many  another  of  different 
races,  helped  to  fill  the  slave-markets  and  harems  of 
the  East  with  Christian  captives.  In  1655  the  power 
of  the  slave-hunting  States  had  somewhat  diminished. 
The  days  when  twenty  of  Ward's  ships  could  be  de- 
stroyed by  a  Spanish  admiral  at  once  without  seriously 
weakening  the  strength  of  the  pirates  were  gone,  but 
Algiers,  Tunis,  and  Tripoli  were  still  sending  out 
cruisers  which  returned  in  most  cases  full  of  merchan- 
dise taken  from  the  Christians,  and  each  with  its  string 
of  men  strong  enough  for  labour,  and  women  or  chil- 
dren beautiful  enough  to  be  saleable.  The  captives  were 
exhibited  naked  in  the  slave-market  for  the  Dey  to 
choose  his  percentage,  and  the  residue  was  then  sold. 
A  large  proportion  of  the  men  turned  renegades,  and 
became  slave-hunters  in  their  turn.  Few  of  the  famous 
leaders  of  early  times,  if  any,  were  Turks  or  Arabs  by  race. 
English  commerce  had  suffered  like  the  rest,  and  on 


In  the  Mediterranean  121 

one  shameful  occasion,  already  mentioned,  a  Flemish 
renegade  had  plundered  Baltimore,  on  the  south  coast 
of  Ireland.  It  is  only  the  other  day  that  the  ludicrous 
misappropriation  of  the  charity  known  as  Smith's  Poor 
Kindred  reminded  Englishmen  that  it  was  once  a  pious 
duty  to  provide  for  the  ransom  of  captives  of  our  race. 
As  yet  little  had  been  done  to  protect  our  commerce 
from  these  attacks.  Elizabeth  had  negotiated,  and 
James  had  sent  a  fleet  which  did  nothing  effectual. 
Charles  and  the  Parliament  had  been  too  busy  on  other 
things.  There  were  accordingly  always  a  number  of 
English  prisoners  in  the  Barbary  ports,  sometimes  as 
many  as  from  two  to  three  hundred  in  Algiers  alone. 
Some  of  them  were  men  of  education  who  have  left 
written  accounts  of  their  miseries.  These  narratives  do 
not  altogether  support  the  familiar  stories  of  wanton 
cruelty  exercised  on  the  slaves.  In  most  cases  they 
seem  to  have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  humane  or  even 
only  indifferent  masters,  who,  in  consideration  of  a  small 
daily  payment,  allowed  them  to  work  for  themselves. 
Still,  such  negative  good  treatment  was  a  poor  consolation 
for  exile  and  slavery. 

At  some  time  in  the  course  of  March  Blake  was  off 
Algiers  attempting  to  come  to  an  arrangement  with  the 
Dey.  It  does  not  seem  to  have  been  any  part  either  of 
his  instructions  or  of  his  intentions  to  fight  if  he  could 
effect  his  object  by  negotiations.  He  was  prepared  to 
buy  the  release  of  English  captives.  There  is  something 
grotesque,  and  at  times  revolting,  in  the  solemn  negotia- 
tions undertaken  by  English  consuls  and  captains  with 
the  Dey  of  Algiers.  It  seems  hardly  credible  that  the 
representatives  of  England  should  ever  have  had  to  argue 


122  Robert  Blake 

solemnly  with  the  barbarian  chief  of  a  population  of 
kidnappers,  with  intent  to  persuade  him  that  the  average 
price  of  an  English  man  or  woman  should  be  so  many- 
ducats,  and  should  have  to  haggle  over  the  money  value 
of  their  own  flesh  and  blood.  Sometimes  when  a 
bargain  had  been  made  it  was  found  that  the  goods 
delivered  were  not  according  to  invoice.  This,  that, 
and  the  other  slave  were  missing.  Then  the  consul  or 
the  admiral  expostulated,  and  was  informed  that  the 
articles  in  question  had  passed  by  lawful  sale  into  the 
hands  of  third  parties,  and  could  not  be  recovered. 
Occasionally  the  Dey  lost  his  temper,  and  furiously  asked 
whether  the  dogs  of  unbelievers  thought  his  patience 
had  no  end.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that 
kidnapping  and  slave-holding  were  not  considered  sins 
in  themselves  by  our  fathers,  not  even  when  the  victims 
were  Englishmen.  The  colonies  were  largely  recruited 
by  these  very  means.  In  James's  reign  a  couple  of 
impostors  excited  a  panic  among  the  female  population 
of  the  Western  counties  by  giving  out,  for  purposes  of 
extortion,  that  they  were  commissioned  by  the  King  to 
press  young  women  for  Virginia.  So  little  did  their 
story  appear  incredible,  that  many  girls  ran  away  and 
hid  themselves.  During  the  civil  wars  strings  of 
Cavalier  and  Scotch  prisoners  were  exported  to  the 
plantations  of  Barbadoes,  Virginia,  and  New  England. 
Lord  Macaulay  has  told  how  the  Queen  and  the  Maids 
of  Honour  turned  an  honest  penny  on  the  prisoners 
after  the  Western  rising  in  1685.  Kidnapping  for  the 
plantations  was  an  active  criminal  industry,  as  may  be 
seen  by  Defoe's  novels  and  the  very  authentic  history 
of  Esquemeling,  the  buccaneer.      In  the  seventeenth 


In  the  Mediterranean  123 

century,  therefore,  Englishmen,  though  they  would  exert 
themselves  for  their  countrymen  enslaved  in  Algiers  or 
Tunis,  did  not  do  it  with  any  lively  horror  at  slavery 
itself.  Any  such  feeling  would  have  been  even  a  trifle 
ridiculous,  in  Bristol,  for  instance,  whose  every  brick 
was  cemented  with  the  blood  of  a  nigger,  as  the  drunken 
actor  reminded  the  townsmen.  When  captives  had  to 
be  rescued  from  the  Algerines  there  was  no  consideration 
of  sentiment  to  prevent  Englishmen  from  making  a 
bargain,  and  keeping  the  employment  of  force  as  a 
reserve  in  case  the  Dey  proved  unreasonable. 

In  the  last  days  of  March  Blake  arrived  at  Tunis, 
and  found  the  Dey  even  more  insolent  than  his  brother 
at  Algiers.  He  would  neither  hear  of  taking  ransom 
nor  give  securities  for  the  future,  nor  even  allow  the 
squadron  to  buy  bread  and  water.  Blake,  according  to 
the  writer  who  invented  various  other  sayings  for  him, 
hereupon  twirled  his  whiskers,  meaning  his  moustache 
doubtless,  and  sententiously  observed  that  bread  and 
water  were  the  common  right  of  humanity.  He  was 
certainly  guiltless  of  this  large  and  withal  pointless 
assertion,  but  the  twirling  of  the  moustache  is  just 
possible.  His  portraits  represent  him  as  clean-shaven, 
but  they  are  of  little  authority,  and  he  may  have  worn 
a  moustache,  as  Cromwell  and  Ireton  did.  With  or 
without  the  gesture,  he  warned  the  Dey  to  take  care, 
and  was  promptly  told  to  look  at  the  forts  and  ships. 

The  Dey's  confidence  in  his  forts  and  fighting  vessels 
was  by  no  means  without  justification.  Tunis,  which  is 
near  by  the  ruins  of  Carthage,  lies  in  a  position  designed 
by  nature  for  a  great  seaport.  It  is  at  the  bottom,  or, 
as  the  seamen  of  the  seventeenth  century  would  have 


124  Robert  Blake 

said,  in  the  cod  of  a  wedge-shaped  bay.  Cape  Bon  to 
the  east,  and  Biserta,  itself  a  naval  station  made  to  the 
hand  of  any  power  with  intelligence  to  nse  it,  to  the 
west,  mark  the  seaward  ends.  Before  Tunis  could  be 
reached,  Porto  Farina  and  the  great  fortress  known  as 
the  Goletta  must  be  mastered.  It  had  been  taken  and 
lost  in  the  wars  of  Charles  V.  and  Don  John  of  Austria. 
Cervantes  had  been  there  with  Don  John  two  years 
after  Lepanto,  and  while  he  was  still  a  soldier  in  the 
tercio  of  Don  Lope  de  Figueroa.  He  has  described 
the  loss  of  the  town,  when  Philip  II.,  with  all  his  usual 
procrastination  and  meanness,  allowed  it  to  be  taken  by 
Uluch  Ali,  in  the  story  of  the  captive  Ruy  Perez  de 
Viedma.  Since  it  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the 
true  believers,  it  had  been  a  pirate  stronghold  of  only 
less  fame  than  Algiers  itself.  Now  the  Dey  was  con- 
fident in  his  power  to  repel  any  assault.  He  drew  his 
nine  cruisers  up  in  front  of  the  mole  of  Porto  Farina, 
and  defied  the  English  to  come  on. 

Though  Blake  must  have  resolved  already  to  take 
him  at  his  word,  he  did  not  accept  the  challenge  at 
once.  Leaving  a  squadron  to  watch  the  port,  he  took 
the  heavier  ships  to  the  coast  of  Sardinia.  This 
measure  has  been  accounted  for  by  his  need  of  pro- 
visions, but  Blake  cannot  have  expected  to  find  munitions 
of  war  at  Cagliari,  and  no  others  were  wanted  for  an 
attack  on  Tunis.  It  is  more  probable  that  he  was 
anxious  to  avoid  a  bombardment  if  he  could,  for  the 
town  was  part  of  the  dominions  of  the  Sultan,  and  it 
was  not  the  interest  of  England,  which  had  a  great 
Levant  trade,  to  quarrel  with  the  sovereign  of  Turkey. 
He  might  therefore  be  willing  to  try  whether  a  blockade 


In  the  Mediterranean  125 

would  not  tame  the  obstinacy  of  the  Dey,  and  would 
profit  by  the  interval  to  water  his  ships.  When  he 
returned,  the  Tunisian  was  as  obstinate  as  ever.  It  was 
now  necessary,  if  our  trade  was  not  to  be  ruined  by  the 
insolence  of  the  pirates,  to  show  them  that  the  patience 
of  England  was  due  to  policy,  not  to  pusillanimity. 

On  April  4  Blake  entered  Tunis  Bay  with  his  fleet 
in  two  squadrons.  One,  formed  of  the  lighter  ships, 
consisted  of  the  '  Newcastle,'  '  Taunton,'  '  Foresight,' 
'  Amity,'  '  Princess  Maria,'  '  Pearl,'  '  Mermaid,'  and 
'  Merlin.'  The  second  included  the  '  George  '  (Blake's 
flagship),  the  l  Andrew,'  '  Plimouth,' '  Worcester,' '  Uni- 
corn,' '  Bridgewater,'  and  '  Success.'  They  stood  in  with 
the  sea-breeze  early  in  the  forenoon,  and  took  up  their 
positions,  each  ship,  as  in  the  case  of  Lord  Exmouth's 
bombardment  of  Algiers,  probably  anchoring  by  the 
stern  within  musket  shot  of  the  batteries  and  armed 
moles.  Once  in  their  places  they  opened  fire  in  answer 
to  the  cannonade  of  the  Turks  and  Tunisians.  The 
object  of  their  attack  was  Porto  Farina,  in  front  of  which 
were  moored  the  Dey's  nine  cruisers.  Blake's  own 
squadron  engaged  the  forts  at  musket  range  or  less, 
while  his  light  squadron  was  to  tackle  the  ships.  Before 
long  the  Dey  must  have  begun  to  discover  that  he  had 
overlooked  one  important  consideration  in  his  calcula- 
tion of  forces,  and  that  was  the  respective  efficiency  of 
his  own  men  and  the  English  as  gunners.  The  very 
slight  loss  of  Blake's  fleet  shows  that  the  practice  of  the 
Tunisians  must  have  been  very  bad.  When  Sir  Charles 
Napier,  noisiest  and  dirtiest  of  British  seamen,  bom- 
barded Acre  two  centuries  afterwards,  Mehemet  Ali's 
artillerymen  fixed  their  guns  at  a  certain  range,  on  the 


126  Robert  Blake 

calculation  that  the  English  must  anchor  just  there. 
Unluckily  for  them,  Sir  Charles  took  his  ships  much 
nearer,  so  that  the  Egyptian  bullets  went  screaming 
harmlessly  through  his  spars.  Something  of  the  sort 
may  have  happened  on  April  4,  1655.  Moreover,  the 
sea  breeze  which  blew  steadily  in  throughout  the  engage- 
ment, sent  the  smoke  of  the  English  guns  rolling  over 
the  forts,  to  the  confusion  of  what  aim  the  Tunisians 
did  try  to  take.  Before  long  the  effect  of  Blake's  steady 
hail  of  well-directed  shot  began  to  be  visible.  The  forts 
were  shattered,  the  guns  dismounted,  and  the  moles 
swept.  Then  when  the  fire  from  the  batteries  was  well 
beaten  down,  the  English  long-boats  and  cutters  were 
manned,  and  driven  through  the  smoke  straight  at  the 
pirate  ships.  Cutlasses,  boarding  pikes,  and  pistols 
made  quick  work  of  whatever  opposition  was  offered  on 
their  decks,  and  every  one  of  them  was  soon  in  flames. 
When  the  English  stood  out  to  sea  that  evening,  with 
the  satisfaction  of  men  who  had  at  last  done  a  long 
wished  for  piece  of  work,  and  done  it  well,  Porto  Farina 
was  rudely  shattered,  and  the  nine  ships  the  Dey  had 
pointed  out  to  their  attention  a  few  days  before  were 
hopelessly  blazing  before  his  eyes.  There  were  men  in 
the  forecastles  of  the  fleet  who  had  sailed  the  Mediterra- 
nean in  fear,  or  had  even  stood  in  the  slave-market,  and 
who  must  have  turned  in  that  night  with  the  feeling  that 
they  had  at  last  paid  a  good  instalment  of  a  long  score. 
The  letter  in  which  Blake,  who  was  by  no  means 
sure  that  this  attack  on  a  vassal  of  the  Sultan  would 
be  approved  of,  reported  his  action  to  the  Protector 
deserves  quotation.  After  giving  an  account  of  the 
abortive  negotiations  for  a  peaceful  settlement,  he  goes 
on,  '  Their  barbarous  provocations  did  so  work   upon 


In  the  Mediterranean  127 

our  spirits  that  we  judged  it  necessary  for  the  honour 
of  the  fleet,  our  nation,  and  religion,  seeing  they  would 
not  deal  with  us  as  friends,  to  make  them  feel  us  as 
enemies,  and  it  was  thereupon  resolved,  at  a  council 
of  war,  to  endeavour  the  firing  of  their  ships  at  Porto 
Farina.  The  better  to  effect  the  same  we  drew  off 
again,  and  sailed  to  Trapani,  so  that  they  might  be 
the  more  sure.  After  a  stay  of  some  days  there,  we  set 
sail  back  for  Porto  Farina,  where  we  arrived  the  3rd 
instant  (April)  in  the  afternoon,  and  met  again  at  a 
council  of  war,  at  which  it  was  resolved,  by  the  permis- 
sion of  God,  to  put  in  execution  our  former  intentions. 
Accordingly,  next  morning,  very  early,  we  entered 
with  the  fleet  into  the  harbour,  and  anchored  before 
their  castles,  the  Lord  being  pleased  to  favour  us  with 
a  gentle  gale  off  the  sea,  which  cast  all  the  smoke  upon 
them  and  made  our  work  the  more  easy,  for  after  some 
hours'  dispute  we  set  on  fire  all  their  ships,  which  were 
nine  in  number,  and,  the  same  favourable  gale  still 
continuing,  we  retreated  out  again  into  the  Roads.  We 
had  25  men  slain  and  about  40  hurt,  with  very  little 
other  loss.  We  are  even  now  setting  sail  to  go  to 
Algiers,  that  being  the  only  place  that  can  afford  us  a 
considerable  supply  of  bread  and  flesh  if  they  will.' 

It  is  a  pious  and  modest  account  of  a  valiant  action, 
but  like  the  writing  of  all  the  men  of  the  time  except 
Cromwell,  a  little  colourless,  wholly  without  individua- 
lity. Reynolds  or  Morgan,  Lawson  or  Deane,  would 
have  written  just  such  another. 

After  the  lesson  taught  them  at  Tunis,  the  Barbary 
States  became  amenable  to  reason.  Captives  were 
released  on  the  payment  of  a  moderate  ransom,  and 
promises  of  good  behaviour  were  made  for  the  future. 


128  Robert  Blake 

Even  after  the  victory,  however,  there  was  no  attempt 
on  the  part  of  the  English  to  rely  on  the  sword  alone. 
The  Algerines  were  not  deprived  of  their  property 
without  compensation,  in  spite  of  the  dubious  character 
of  their  right.  When  some  Dutch  captives  swam  off  to 
the  English  fleet  at  Algiers,  the  sailors  subscribed  a 
dollar  apiece  to  buy  them  their  freedom.  Blake  even 
tried  to  recover  some  Turks,  who  were  prisoners  in  the 
hands  of  the  Knights  of  St.  John  at  Malta,  and  had 
a  tiff  of  fighting  with  these  military  monks  who  were 
every  whit  as  great  slave-hunters  as  the  Algerines: 

This  cruise  is  one  of  the  most  important  in  the 
history  of  the  English  navy.  The  mere  fighting  alone 
was  of  what  it  is  convenient,  though  possibly  a  little 
pompous,  to  call  an  epoch-making  character,  for  the 
attack  on  Porto  Farina  was  the  first  thing  of  its  kind 
done  on  a  large  scale  and  with  complete  success. 
Clarendon  went  beyond  his  text  when  he  said  that 
Blake  first  taught  sailors  to  despise  castles  on  shore, 
but  he  was  not  speaking  without  book.  The  Earl  of 
Essex — the  Parliament's  Earl,  not  Elizabeth's — had 
battered  down  a  fort  at  Cadiz  with  a  single  ship,  long 
before,  and  a  few  other  such  pieces  of  service  were  done 
elsewhere.  Still  the  bombardment  of  Porto  Farina, 
and  the  burning  of  the  Dey's  nine  war-vessels,  was  one 
of  those  conspicuous  pieces  of  fighting  which  all  the 
world  sees  and  remembers.  Sailors  did  not  learn  then, 
and  have  not  learnt  since,  to  despise  castles  on  shore 
when  the  said  castles  are  too  strong  to  be  attacked. 
But  they  did  prove  that  some  castles  may  be  tackled 
with  success,  and  with  practice  they  got  to  put  the 
standard  of  manageable  strength  much  higher  than  it 


In  the  Mediterranean  129 

had  ever  been  before.  The  capture  of  Cadiz  in  Elizabeth's 
reign  was,  it  must  not  be  forgotten,  the  work  of  the  land 
forces,  and  moreover  the  town,  which  was  one  of  the 
strongest  in  Europe  in  Blake's  time,  was  then  very  in- 
adequately fortified. 

The  novelty  of  the  work  Blake  did  in  this  cruise 
was,  however,  not  a  mere  matter  of  fighting.  British 
seamen  have  on  few  occasions  shown  themselves  back- 
ward to  go  where  they  were  ordered.  The  originality 
of  what  the  Protector's  fleet  did  in  the  Mediterranean 
during  the  early  months  of  1655  lay  in  this,  that  it 
marked  the  end  of  the  period  in  which  our  merchant 
ships  were  expected  to  protect  themselves,  and  the 
beginning  of  the  better  time  in  which  they  have  had 
the  fleet  always  at  hand  to  protect  them.  Elizabeth 
had  negotiated  for  her  merchants,  and  had  fought  on 
occasion.  James  had  threatened  strong  measures  and 
had  sent  a  squadron  to  Algiers.  It  had,  however,  done 
nothing  Englishmen  had  not  every  reason  to  forget. 
Neither  of  these  sovereigns,  and  still  less  Charles,  had 
been  able  to  follow  out  a  consistent  policy  designed  to 
make  foreigners  understand  that  a  wrong  done  to  the 
meanest  of  Englishmen  was  an  insult  to  England  which 
would  be  vigorously  avenged.  Blake's  cruise  taught 
this  lesson.  He  had  made  the  round  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean with  an  irresistible  fleet,  showing  the  flag, 
insisting  on  a  settlement  of  old  accounts,  and  letting 
princes  or  pirates  see  the  force  which  could  and  would 
come  to  the  help  of  every  aggrieved  subject  of  the  rulers 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  In  1655  the  navy  came 
to  its  majority.  It  passed  from  being  the  protector  of 
the  shores  of  England,  and  the  force  which  could  carry 

K 


130  Robert  Blake 

out  an  isolated  enterprise,  into  the  permanent  armed 
chivalry  of  the  sea  always  at  hand  to  protect  all  those 
who  go  upon  the  sea  on  their  lawful  occasions,  and  the 
untiring  enemy  of  the  enemies  of  mankind,  the  pirates 
who  are  hostes  humani  generis. 

On  his  way  home,  Blake  had  an  opportunity  of 
showing  the  Spaniards  how  dangerous  it  had  become  to 
meddle  rashly  with  Englishmen.  The  story  cannot  be 
told  without  a  warning.  It  rests  on  the  authority  of 
Bishop  Burnet  alone,  and  is  therefore  not  beyond 
question.  Still  the  Bishop  has  not  been  shown  to  be  a 
liar  for  the  love  of  the  thing,  and  in  this  case  he  unites 
two  of  the  qualities  required  to  make  a  trustworthy 
witness.  He  had  the  means  of  knowing  the  truth,  and 
no  motive  not  to  tell  it.  The  story,  the  best  known  of 
all  told  about  Blake,  is  this.  The  fleet  put  in  at  Malaga 
on  its  way  home,  and  was  well  received.  Observe — 
Venables  and  Penn  were  bungling  over  their  attack  on 
San  Domingo  during  these  very  months,  and  were 
seizing  Jamaica,  there  being,  according  to  the  inter- 
national law  of  the  time,  no  peace  beyond  the  line. 
While  the  fleet  was  at  anchor  in  the  Roads  leave  was 
given  to  the  men.  One  of  the  sailors  was  so  rash,  or  so 
brutal,  or  so  good  a  puritan,  or  perhaps  only  so  careless, 
as  to  do  something  which  the  Spaniards  interpreted  into 
an  insult  to  a  religious  procession.  A  monk  of  notorious 
and  popular  piety  egged  the  bystanders  on  to  handle 
the  heretic  roughly.  The  man  got  out  of  their  hands, 
and  complained  to  Blake  of  the  assault.  Hereupon,  the 
English  Admiral  presented  a  demand  for  the  punishment 
of  the  monk  to  the  Viceroy,  and  was  told  that  the  civil 
authorities  had  no  power  over  the  Church.  The  answer, 
if  given,  was  a  cool  lie,  for  the  Viceroys  of  the  King  of 


In  the  Mediterranean  131 

Spain  had  abundant  power  to  punish  ecclesiastics  for 
common  offences.  Of  this  Blake  was  doubtless  well 
aware.  He  at  once  answered  that,  these  things  being 
so,  if  the  monk  was  not  given  up  to  him,  he  would  at 
the  end  of  a  certain  time  open  fire  on  Malaga.  As 
the  interval  for  repentance  was  drawing  to  an  end,  and 
the  fleet,  with  its  decks  cleared  for  action,  was  preparing 
for  a  repetition  of  the  affair  of  Porto  Farina,  a  shore 
boat  came  alongside  with  the  monk.  Then,  on  the 
quarter-deck  of  the  c  George/  Blake  made  his  great 
declaration  touching  the  rights  of  the  British  subject. 
He  told  the  monk  that  this  act  of  submission  was  enough, 
that  he  should  not  hang  him.  If  the  Viceroy  had  com- 
plained of  the  sailor,  he  himself  would  have  punished 
him,  but  as  the  Spaniards  had  taken  the  law  into  their 
own  hands,  he  must  make  them  understand  that  English- 
men were  only  to  be  judged  by  Englishmen.  With  that 
he  sent  the  too  zealous  monk  back.  When  Cromwell 
heard  this  story  he  was  greatly  delighted,  and  uttered 
his  famous  saying,  i  I  will  make  the  name  of  English- 
man to  be  as  much  dreaded  as  ever  was  the  name  of 
civis  Romanus  ' — the  first  assertion  of  a  policy  now 
somewhat  fallen  into  disuse. 

The  tale  is  supported  by  dubious  direct  evidence, 
and  yet  it  is  intrinsically  not  improbable.  Even  those 
who  are  punctilious  in  demanding  good  security  for  Sir 
John,  must  allow  Burnet's  to  be  better  than  Bardolph's. 
The  direct  statement  of  a  well-informed  contemporary, 
who  was  doubtless  somewhat  credulous  but  not  wilfully 
mendacious,  may  be  allowed  to  weigh  against  the  silence 
of  State  papers.  We  are  drifting  into  an  exclusive 
respect  for  whatever  has  been  buried  in  a  barrel  at  the 

K  2 


132  Robert  Blake 

Record  Office,  and  brought  to  light  by  means  of  a  Calendar 
of  State  Papers.  The  probabilities  are  on  the  whole  in 
favour  of  Burnet.  Blake  knew  well  how  Spain  and 
England  stood,  and  what  was  the  policy  of  the  Protector. 
In  these  very  months  he  was  in  receipt  of  orders  to 
intercept  the  Plate  ships,  and  was  about  to  cruise  for 
them  off  Cadiz.  He  must  unquestionably  have  shared 
in  the  general  desire  and  determination  of  his  country- 
men, to  teach  the  Inquisition  once  and  for  all  to  let 
Englishmen  alone.  The  action  of  the  monk  would 
give  him  an  excellent  opening.  His  man  was  un- 
doubtedly in  the  wrong,  but  the  question  at  issue  was 
whether  Spanish  ecclesiastics  were  or  were  not  to  be 
sole  judges  of  what  was  an  offence  against  their  religion. 
It  could  scarcely  have  been  brought  to  the  test  better 
than  by  some  such  event  as  this,  and  there  is  no  ground 
for  denying  Blake  the  courage  and  self-reliance  needed 
to  act  as  he  is  said  to  have  done.  The  moderation  of 
the  story  is  also  in  its  favour,  for  it  does  not  make  him 
claim  impunity  for  Englishmen  who  insulted  the  Roman 
Catholic  religion,  but  only  their  right  not  to  be  left  at 
the  arbitrary  disposal  of  the  clergy.  For  the  rest,  the 
story,  if  not  actually  true,  has  what  Mr.  Carlyle  was  in 
the  habit  of  calling  a  mythical  truth.  Blake  was  em- 
ployed during  all  these  months  in  doing  just  what  the 
story  said  he  did.  Its  popularity,  and  the  general 
credence  it  received,  made  it  an  example  to  succeeding 
naval  officers.  While  he  was  on  the  southern  coast  of 
Spain,  all  England  was  shocked  into  rage  by  the  per- 
secution of  the  Protestants  of  Piedmont.  The  recent 
memory  of  Porto  Farina,  and  the  knowledge  that  the 
fleet  was  there,  must  have  helped  to  induce  the  Duke  of 
Savoy  to  listen  to  Milton's  Latin. 


133 


CHAPTER  IX. 

CHASING   THE   PLATE   SHIPS. 

Unfortunately  for  the  officers  and  men  of  H.M. 
ships  and  vessels  of  war,  the  words  Register  ship, 
Plate  ship,  Acapulco  ship,  are  now  words  of  little 
meaning.  Never  again  will  it  be  written  that  the 
British  frigates  '  Naiad,'  Captain  William  Pierrepoint, 
c  Ethalion,'  Captain  James  Young,  c  Triton/  Captain 
John  Gore,  and  '  Alcmene,'  Captain  Henry  Digby,  have 
arrived  at  Plymouth  with  the  Spanish  register  ships 
c  Thetis  '  and c  Santa  Brigida,'  and  that  the  prize  money 
received  by  the  captors  was  as  follows  : — 


£        s. 

d. 

Captains 

.     each  40,730  18 

0 

Lieutenants  . 

„       5,091     7 

3 

Warrant  officers    . 

„      2,468  10 

9 

Petty  officers 

791  17 

0 

Seamen  and  marines 

182     4 

9 

The  same  seamen  and  marines  will  no  more  be  seen 
roaming  about  Portsmouth  with  bank  notes  stuck  in 
their  hats,  buying  watches  for  the  fun  of  frying  them, 
and  issuing  laws  that  any  of  their  crews  who  appeared 
without  a  gold-laced  hat  should  be  cobbed,  so  that  the 


134  Robert  Blake 

unlucky  man  who  appeared  in  silver  could  only  escape 
by  representing  that  the  costlier  articles  were  all  bought 
up,  but  he  had  compelled  the  shopkeeper  to  take  money 
for  gold  lace.  This  spectacle  was,  however,  to  be  seen 
in  our  ports  during  the  seventeenth  and  the  last  century. 
The  capture  of  the  c  Thetis '  and  c  Santa  Brigida '  hap- 
pened in  1799. 

From  the  time  that  Francis  Drake  captured  the 
c  Cacafuego,'  it  had  been  the  dream  of  the  English 
sailor  to  have  the  same  luck.  The  prize  was  worth 
fighting  for,  as  the  case  of  these  two  ships  shows.  And 
they  were  by  no  means  the  biggest  haul  of  the  kind 
which  came  into  the  naval  net.  Sir  Charles  Wager 
made  100,000£.  of  prize  money  by  one  such  capture  in 
the  good  times  of  Queen  Anne.  The  wealth  of  Spain 
was  a  great  object  of  desire  to  Protestant  England  in 
earlier  times,  and  to  commercial  England  in  later.  To 
Spain  herself,  it  was  of  little  use.  She  and  Portugal 
were,  in  Adam  Smith's  phrase,  c  the  two  most  beggarly 
nations  in  Europe,'  while  their  fleets  brought  home 
bullion  to  the  value  of  millions  every  few  years.  Latterly, 
little  of  it  was  even  landed  in  Spain.  The  Spaniards  of 
the  seventeenth  century  were  the  Damnati  ad  metalla 
of  Europe,  in  the  classical  language  of  the  time.  The 
gold  and  silver  they  dug  from  their  mines  supplied  the 
market  of  Europe,  but  the  greater  part  of  it  was  trans- 
ferred into  Dutch  ships  at  sea  to  meet  the  bills  of  the 
Spanish  Government,  which  has  anticipated  its  revenue 
from  time  immemorial,  and  was  compelled  by  its 
necessities  to  connive  at  this  violation  of  its  own  laws 
against  the  export  of  the  precious  metals,  but  for  who- 
ever could  catch  it  on  blue  water  the  gain  was  clear. 


Chasing  the  Plate  Ships  135 

And  what  a  booty  it  was !  Once  every  year 
there  came  a  great  galleon  from  the  Philippines  to 
Acapulco,  on  the  Pacific  coast  of  Mexico,  laden  with 
wealth  which  was  to  be  exchanged  for  that  part  of 
the  produce  of  the  Mexican  mines  not  shipped  for 
Europe.  This  was  the  booty  of  Drake,  Cavendish,  and 
Anson.  The  gold  of  Peru,  the  silver  of  Potosi,  the 
emeralds  of  what  is  now  called  Ecuador,  were  stored  at 
Guayaquil,  and  then  carried  in  great  treasure-.ships, 
built  long  and  sharp  below  the  water  line,  to  work  up 
against  the  prevailing  westerly  winds  of  the  Pacific 
coast  of  South  America  to  Panama.  Panama  contributed 
its  own  share  in  the  form  of  pearls  fished  out  of  the 
Gulf  called  by  the  Spaniards,  who  first  saw  it  from  the 
peak  in  Darien,  the  South  Sea.  Long  recuas  of  mules 
and  slaves — the  word  has  been  made  familiar  by  '  West- , 
ward  Ho ! ' — carried  the  treasure  over  the  Tsthmus,  where 
the  galleons  were  waiting  for  it.  The  fleets  from  Panama 
and  La  Vera  Cruz  met  in  the  West  Indies,  and  filled 
up  with  the  produce  of  the  islands.  Then  with  their 
gold,  .silver,  quicksilver,  precious  stones  and  pearls, 
stowed  away  under  the  captain's  cabin,  and  their  holds 
full  of  sugar,  tobacco,  hides,  and  dye  wood,  they  took 
their  way  for  Europe.  These  priceless  cargoes  were 
carried  in  great  galleons  of  from  twelve  to  eighteen 
hundred  tons,  armed  with  from  forty  to  sixty  cannon. 
A  crowd  of  small  craft  accompanied  them  as  tenders, 
to  supply  them  with  provisions  in  case  of  need,  and  to 
keep  a  look-out  for  enemies.  The  voyage  was  broken 
at  Santa  Cruz  de  Tenerife,  where  the  Spaniards  had 
kept  a  garrison  ever  since  the  Elizabethan  seamen 
had  made  the  Canaries  their  rendezvous  to  wait  for  the 


136  Robert  Blake 

treasure-ships.  Here  in  time  of  war  they  were  met  by 
swift  craft  from  Spain  to  tell  them  whether  the  coast 
was  clear,  or  to  warn  them  to  stop  if  a  Dutch  or  English 
fleet  was  cruising  outside  of  Cadiz.  Even  in  its  last 
stage  of  decadence  the  Austrian  dynasty  had  never 
wholly  neglected  the  treasure-ships.  When  its  other 
men-of-war  were  rotting  in  harbour,  they  were  kept  in 
a  tolerably  efficient  state.  The  officers  and  crews  were 
generally  Basques,  or  at  least  seamen  from  the  north 
coast,  and  strong  bodies  of  picked  soldiers  served  as 
marines. 

To  get  their  arms  up  to  the  elbows  into  all  this  mass 
of  wealth  was  the  dearest  ambition  of  generations  of 
seamen.  To  prevent  the  Spanish  Government  from 
using  it  in  support  of  the  Catholic  power  was  no  less  an 
object  with  the  rulers  of  England.  Hence  those  innu- 
merable voyages  to  the  islands  (i.e.  the  Canaries  and 
Azores)  which  fill  the  naval  annals  of  Elizabeth's  reign. 
Raleigh  and  Cumberland,  Hawkins  and  Drake,  gentle- 
men captains  and  tarpaulin  captains,  had  cruised  for 
months  waiting  for  the  great  prize.  For  the  most  part 
they  had  cruised  in  vain.  The  Spaniards  had  too  many 
harbours  of  refuge,  were  too  cautious  to  be  easily  caught 
by  a  big  fleet,  and  when  sighted  by  small  squadrons 
were  commonly  too  strong  to  be  attacked.  In  1628, 
the  Dutchman  Pieter  Hein  captured  a  treasure  fleet,  but 
this  was  a  solitary  case.  It  was  enough  to  encourage 
others  to  try  for  the  same  luck  though.  Even  in  time 
of  peace  the  treasure-ships  were  never  quite  safe,  and 
any  one  of  them  which  fell  behind  by  accident  made  the 
rest  of  her  voyage  in  fear  and  trembling.  In  a  later 
generation  the  Plate  fleet  was  attacked  at  its  very  place 


Chasing  the  Plate  Ships  137 

of  lading.  The  buccaneers,  whose  heroic  period  lies 
between  1660  and  1690,  grabbed  at  the  booty  even 
before  it  was  on  board.  It  was  with  this  object  that 
Morgan  made  his  wonderful  march  across  the  mountains 
to  Panama,  and  that  '  that  great  sea  artist  and  valiant 
commander,  Captain  Bartholomew  Sharp,'  and  others, 
seized  canoes  in  the  South  Sea,  and  fell  upon  the  coasts 
of  Peru.  In  1684  the  buccaneers,  English,  Dutch,  and 
French,  sacked  Guayaquil,  and  there  found  the  accumu- 
lated treasure  of  years,  wealth  beyond  the  drunkenest 
dreams  of  Wapping ;  but  the  feats  of  the  buccaneer 
power,  that  picturesque  phase  of  the  secular  struggle  for 
the  trade  of  America,  do  not  belong  in  any  way  to  the 
life  of  Blake. 

The  export  trade  to  the  Spanish  colonies  was  ma- 
naged in  much  the  same  way.  Those  parts  of  the 
Catholic  King's  dominions  which  were  allowed  to  trade 
with  the  colonies  at  all,  and  the  privilege  was  limited  to 
territory  of  the  crown  of  Castile,  were  compelled  to 
conduct  all  their  business  through  the  city  of  Seville. 
Ships  were  laden  for  America  in  early  times  at  the 
capital  of  Andalusia  itself,  but  when  the  galleons  had 
grown  too  big  to  be  brought  up  the  Guadalquivir,  then 
at  San  Lucar  de  Barrameda,  Puerto  de  Santa  Maria,  and 
Cadiz.  A  squadron  cruising  off  the  mouth  of  the  Straits 
was  therefore  exactly  in  position  to  catch  the  Spaniards 
at  their  going  out  and  their  coming  in. 

Blake  was  to  be  employed  on  this  work  for  the  rest 
of  his  life.  From  the  spring  of  1655  till  the  September 
of  that  year  he  was  cruising  between  the  coast  of  Africa 
and  Lisbon,  waiting  for  the  Plate  fleet  which  never 
came,  and  watching  for  the  outward-bound  ships  which 


138  Robert  Blake 

never  put  to  sea.  In  1656  he  returned  to  the  same 
waters  on  the  same  task,  and  went  back  to  England 
only  to  die  at  the  mouth  of  Plymouth  Sound.  Other 
work  had  to  be  done  incidentally,  but  the  great  object 
was  always  the  treasure.  Cromwell  was  thoroughly 
determined  to  break  down  the  power  of  Spain  in  the 
West  Indies.  Motives  of  a  political,  commercial,  and 
religious  kind  made  him  resolute  on  that  point,  but  he 
does  not  seem  to  have  desired  a  war  with  Spain  in 
Europe.  If  Philip  IV.  had  been  prepared  to  play  the 
game  according  to  Cromwell's  rules,  to  have  war  beyond 
the  line  and  for  the  American  trade  alone,  it  would  seem 
that  the  Protector  would  have  been  content  to  leave  the 
coast  of  Spain  and  its  European  commerce  in  peace. 
This  seems,  from  our  point  of  view,  a  monstrous  pre- 
tension, but  it  is  astonishing  for  how  long  the  Govern- 
ment at  Madrid  was  prepared  to  accept  it  tacitly.  The 
fleet  under  Penn  and  Venables,  which  had  sailed  from 
England  in  December  1654,  almost  at  the  same  time 
as  Blake's  squadron,  had  committed  an  undoubted 
aggression  on  the  Spanish  possessions.  It  had  attacked 
San  Domingo,  and  taken  Jamaica,  but  Philip  did  not 
declare  war  for  months.  Possibly  he  may  have  thought 
that  the  expedition  was  sufficiently  punished  by  its  own 
mishaps,  for  indeed,  this  great  buccaneering  business 
was  on  the 'whole  a  lamentable  failure.  Of  the  six 
thousand  men  it  carried,  few  ever  found  their  way  back 
to  England.  Penn  and  Venables  quarrelled,  the  soldiers 
began  by  being  disorderly  and  ended  by  showing  them- 
selves cowards.  They  were  to  a  large  extent  old 
Koyalists,  who  went  to  the  West  Indies  because  they 
were  ruined  at  home,  and  the   King's  soldiers  were  at 


Chasing  the  Plate  Ships  139 

no  time  famous  for  their  discipline.  The  attack  on  San 
Domingo  failed  shamefully,  and  Jamaica,  though  it  was 
taken  with  little  trouble,  was  then  nearly  waste,  and 
proved  for  a  long  time  a  very  costly  possession.  But  if 
Philip  IV.  was  prepared  to  let  things  rest  as  they  were, 
Cromwell  was  not.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  only  the 
more  resolute  to  make  the  Plate  fleets  pay  for  the 
failure  in  the  West  Indies. 

In  June  of  1655,  before  bad  news  had  come  from 
the  Antilles,  Blake  had  orders  of  a  sufficiently  intel- 
ligible sort.  In  answering  the  Admiral's  report  of  the 
attack  on  Tunis  the  Protector  let  him  know  that  '  we, 
having  taken  into  consideration  the  present  design  we 
have  in  the  West  Indies,  have  judged  it  necessary  that 
not  only  the  King  of  Spain's  fleets  coming  from  thence 
be  intercepted  (which,  as  well  your  former  instruc- 
tions as  those  now  sent  unto  you  require  and  authorise 
you  to  do),  but  that  we  endeavour  also,  as  much  as  in 
us  lies,  to  hinder  him  from  sending  any  relief  or  assist- 
ance thither.  You  are  therefore,  during  your  abode 
with  the  fleet  in  those  seas,  to  inform  yourself  by  the 
best  means  you  can  concerning  the  going  of  the  King 
of  Spain's  fleet  for  the  West  Indies  :  and  shall,  according 
to  such  information  as  you  can  gain,  use  your  best 
endeavour  to  intercept  at  sea  and  fight  with  and  take 
them,  or  otherwise  to  fire  and  sink  them ;  as  also  any 
other  of  his  ships  which  you  shall  understand  to  be 
bound  for  the  West  Indies  with  provisions  of  war  for 
the  aid  and  assistance  of  his  subjects  there;  carrying 
yourself  towards  others  of  his  ships  and  people  as  you 
are  directed  by  your  general  instructions.'  To  carry 
out  this  policy,  which  grew  stricter  as  time  went  on, 


140  Robert  Blake 

and  ended  in  general  war,  was  the  purpose  of  Blake's 
two  years'  cruise. 

Nothing  is  harder  to  realise  than  what  this  blockad- 
ing work  must  have  meant.  From  May  1655  until 
August  1657,  twenty-seven  months  in  all,  Blake  was 
occupied  with  few  intervals  in  sailing  to  and  fro  between 
two  given  points.  The  incidents  which  break  this 
monotonous  patrolling  were  the  return  for  a  brief  space 
to  England,  Stayner's  attack  on  the  Marquis  of  Badajoz, 
and  the  bombardment  of  Santa  Cruz.  In  the  intervals 
the  Admiral's  work  cannot  have  been  much  more  inte- 
resting than  the  daily  rounds  of  the  policeman,  and  can  as 
little  be  told,  even  if  the  biographer  were  to  apply  him- 
self, as  Gustave  Flaubert  once  deliberately  did,  to  exciting 
in  the  mind  of  his  reader  an  intense  feeling  of  boredom. 
Sir  Harris  Nicolas  has  quoted  some  pages  from  the  log 
of  Nelson's  flagship  during  the  long  blockade  of  Toulon. 
They  mark  the  movements  of  the  fleet  for  the  day,  the 
number  of  tacks  made,  the  sails  set  and  taken  in,  and 
then  set  again,  the  changes  in  the  weather,  and  the 
number  of  knots  traversed  in  this  direction  or  in  that. 
Multiply  these  pages  by  a  hundred,  and  you  will  pro- 
bably attain  to  as  distinct  a  conception  as  can  possibly 
be  obtained  without  actual  experience  of  what  the 
average  work  of  the  navy  was  in  the  old  wars.  The 
battles  which  fill  the  histories  were  the  exception,  the 
blockades  were  the  rule.  And  they  were  something  alto- 
gether different  from  the  intervals  of  marching,  or  garrison 
work,  or  mere  camping  which  lie  between  the  soldier's  days 
of  combat.  The  sailor  was  shut  off  from  the  rest  of  man- 
kind, and  was  not  only  unable  to  secure  variety,  but  even 
to  get  privacy.    He  passed  months  in  the  discharge  of  the 


Chasing  the  Plate  Ships  141 

same  duties,  among  surroundings  which  never  varied, 
and  hardships  great  even  to  men  brought  up  from  boy- 
hood to  a  hard  life.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  if  the 
sailors  indemnified  themselves  for  the  monastic  seclusion 
of  their  life  on  board  by  rough  dissipation  when  they  got 
on  shore.  The  extraordinary  rancour  and  pertinacity 
of  naval  quarrels  may  be  accounted  for,  if  not  excused, 
on  the  same  grounds. 

In  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  blockading 
work  was  new  to  the  English  fleet,  and  was  harder  than 
it  ever  became  in  later  times.  During  Elizabeth's  reign 
cruises  had  been  of  short  duration.  Drake  and  Caven- 
dish had  indeed  been  absent  on  their  great  voyages  of 
circumnavigation  for  two  years  on  a  stretch,  but  they 
spent  much  of  that  time  in  harbours  on  the  American 
coast  or  among  the  islands  of  the  Indian  Ocean.  Until 
Blake  set  the  example,  it  was  an  unheard  of  thing  to 
keep  a  great  fleet  at  sea  all  through  the  winter,  and  even 
he  and  his  immediate  successors  were  in  the  habit  of 
sending  the  heavier  ships  home  at  the  approach  of  the 
stormy  months.  Indeed,  the  difficulty  of  keeping  a  large 
naval  force  at  a  distance  from  England  was  fifty  times 
greater  than  it  was  in  the  eighteenth  century.  Until 
Eooke  took  Gibraltar,  we  had  not  a  single  naval  station 
in  foreign  European  waters.  A  squadron  in  the  Medi- 
terranean had  to  depend  for  supplies  on  ships  sent  out 
from  home,  or  on  what  it  could  get  for  love  or  money  in 
neutral  ports.  The  Admiralty  correspondence  of  the 
time  is  full  of  appeals  from  admirals  and  complaints  of 
the  state  of  their  squadrons,  and  of  promises  of  relief 
on  the  part  of  the  commissioners,  and  notices  of  vessels 
fitting  out  to  carry  stores  to  the  fleet  in  the  Straits. 


142  Robert  Blake 

The  method  of  supply  was  uncertain,  and  at  the  best  of 
times  desperately  slow.  Purchase  in  the  neutral  ports 
was  not  always  a  quicker  method,  and  was  even  more 
uncertain.  When  Penn  was  left  in  the  Mediterranean 
in  1650,  to  look  after  the  remains  of  Rupert's  fleet,  he 
found  the  utmost  difficulty  in  keeping  his  half-dozen 
frigates  supplied  with  provisions  during  his  wanderings 
to  and  fro.  His  diaries  bristle  with  entries  showing  how 
hard  he  found  it  to  obtain  meat,  bread,  and  the  beverage 
wine  which  was  served  out  to  the  men  in  place  of  the 
beer  they  received  in  the  Channel.  Spanish  viceroys 
and  Italian  princes  had  to  be  first  persuaded  to  allow  the 
purchases  to  be  made.  Then  syndics  and  such  like 
municipal  authorities  had  to  be  got  to  exert  themselves 
to  make  the  bakers  bake  at  a  reasonable  price.  Often 
enough  the  syndics  were  far  from  willing  to  allow,  or, 
where  they  could  not  prevent  it,  to  encourage  this 
sudden  increase  of  demand  in  the  local  market,  on  the 
intelligible  ground  that  it  either  raised  prices  for  the 
citizens  or  caused  discontent  among  the  tradesmen. 
Occasionally  an  English  admiral  had  to  have  recourse 
to  threatening  language  before  he  could  obtain  leave  to 
buy  even  the  most  necessary  provisions.  When  the 
neutral  states  were  unfriendly,  or  at  a  distance  from 
the  cruising  ground  of  the  fleet,  these  difficulties  were 
proportionately  increased.  As  a  matter  of  course  they 
reached  the  sailor  in  the  shape  of  reductions  of  a  quarter 
or  half  in  his  rations,  for  which,  he  was,  however,  en- 
titled to  be  compensated  in  money. 

As  the  commercial  interests  of  England  in  the 
Mediterranean  increased,  and  as  her  fleets  began  to 
make  it  a  regular  cruising  ground,  the  want  of  a  port 


Chasing  the  Plate  Ships  143 

in  which  ships  could  be  repaired,  and  stores  collected, 
began  to  be  acutely  felt.  In  the  eighteenth  century  it 
was  supplied  by  the  occupation  of  Gibraltar  and  Port 
Mahon ;  and  when  Minorca  had  been  lost,  by  Malta.  The 
chain  of  posts  has  been  completed  in  these  times  by  the 
occupation  of  Cyprus  and  Egypt.  Tangier  had  been 
accepted  as  part  of  the  dower  of  Catharine  of  Braganza, 
largely  in  hope  that  it  would  serve  the  turn ;  and  long 
before  this  the  need  of  a  dockyard  and  harbour  of  refuge 
in  or  near  the  Mediterranean  had  been  felt.  Some,  at 
least,  of  Elizabeth's  officers  had  seen  the  evacuation 
of  Cadiz  with  regret ;  while  Cromwell,  with  prophetic 
sagacity,  fixed  on  another  point  of  the  Spanish  coast  as 
convenient  to  be  seized  and  held  by  England. 

The  first  period  of  Blake's  cruisings  after  the  Plate 
fleet  was  barren.  In  September  1655  he  returned  to 
England,  and  saw  his  native  land,  and  perhaps  his 
patrimonial  estate  in  Somerset,  for  the  last  time.  A 
passing  notice  of  his  stay  in  England  is  to  be  found  in 
the  correspondence  of  Charles's  secretary,  Nicholas.  The 
Koyalist  exile  reports  a  story  to  the  effect  that  Blake 
and  Montague  had  been  sent  to  the  Downs  to  pacify  the 
seamen  who  were  half-mutinous  because  Lawson  had 
been  removed  from  his  command.  As  this  rumour,  for 
that  is  all  it  seems  to  have  been,  agrees  with  what  is 
known  of  the  Admiral's  steady  fidelity  to  Cromwell,  it 
may  possibly  have  some  truth  in  it;  but  the  statements 
of  Nicholas  and  the  other  adherents  of  Charles  at 
Breda  are  only  to  be  accepted  with  caution.  They 
were  exiles — a  class  of  men  who  are  always  extremely 
credulous — and  they  had  to  rely  for  information  either 
on  angry  partisans,  who  would  see  everything  through 


144  Robert  Blake 

party  spectacles,  or  on  spies,  who  would  say  just  what 
seemed  to  them  likely  to  please  their  employers.  In 
this  very  letter,  Secretary  Nicholas  states  calmly,  with 
the  air  of  a  well-informed  person  reporting  a  notorious 
matter  of  fact,  that  i  the  discontent  among  seamen  is 
so  general  that,  if  they  had  known  they  would  have 
security  in  the  King  of  Spain's  ports,  by  his  having 
made  a  fast  conjunction  with  our  King,  many,  nay 
most  of  the  fleet,  would  have  abandoned  Cromwell,  who 
is  said  to  be  most  odious  among  the  seamen.'  Hopeful 
speculation  of  this  kind  is  scattered  up  and  down  the 
Royalist  correspondence  in  abundance,  and  may  be 
taken  for  what  it  is  worth  as  evidence  of  their  beliefs 
and  feelings.  It  contrasts  curiously  with  the  steady 
refusal  of  their  partisans  to  attempt  or  even  recommend 
a  landing  in  face  of  this  same  mutinous  fleet.  Nicholas 
was  not  the  first  nor  yet  the  last  exile  who  grounded  too 
great  confidence  on  the  grumblings  of  the  British  sea- 
man. If  Charles  had  made  his  fast  conjunction  with 
the  King  of  Spain,  he  would  certainly  have  found,  as 
his  brother  was  destined  to  do  at  La  Hogue,  that  the 
loyalty  of  the  sailors  did  not  extend  to  making  them 
miss  a  chance  of  beating  the  foreigner.  Spanish  ports 
were  to  be  closed  to  Cromwell's  fleet  for  many  months 
to  come,  but  the  only  one  they  sailed  into  was  Santa 
Cruz,  and  on  that  occasion  neither  his  Catholic  Majesty 
nor  the  son  of  the  late  Man  profited  by  their  action. 

In  March  1656  Blake  sailed  from  Torbay,  with 
Montague  as  his  colleague,  in  command  of  a  fleet  of 
forty  sail.  By  this  time  there  was  open  and  general 
war  with  Spain,  so  that  the  admirals  went  provided 
with  instructions  of  the  sink,  burn,  and  destroy  kind. 


Chasing  the  Plate  Ships  145 

The  ships  had  not  been  got  ready  without  trouble. 
Money  was  hard  to  come  by,  and  men  could  only  be 
collected  slowly  and  in  driblets. 

In  the  inevitable  course  of  things  the  importance 
of  these  obstacles  was  grossly  exaggerated  in  the  loose 
talk  of  the  time.  Like  other  rulers  of  England,  be- 
fore and  afterwards,  until  the  increase  of  the  national 
wealth,  the  foundation  of  the  Bank,  and  the  formation 
of  the  funded  debt,  put  it  in  the  power  of  the  Treasury 
to  command  millions  at  a  few  days'  notice,  Cromwell 
had  his  difficulties  in  finding  money.  It  does  not 
appear  that  he  had  more  to  suffer  in  this  respect  than 
Elizabeth,  James,  and  Charles.  He  was  at  least  never 
reduced  to  the  necessity  of  asking  the  Spaniards  to 
bribe  him  to  help  them  against  the  Dutch,  and  then 
begging  the  Dutch  to  bribe  him  to  betray  the  Spaniards. 
As  for  the  want  of  men,  that  was  destined  to  remain  a 
chronic  disease.  A  hundred  and  sixty  years  later,  when 
all  England  was  loyal  enough,  Collingwood  describes 
his  ship's  company  as  a  motley  crew  of  many  nations. 
He  had  even  once  to  impress  a  negro  general  from  San 
Domingo,  and  turn  him  into  a  topman.  There  was 
another  fleet  fitting  out  for  the  West  Indies  in  1656 ; 
and  to  find  crews  for  both,  in  face  of  the  competition  of 
the  merchant  ships,  was  not  easy.  In  spite  of  increased 
pay  and  better  rations,  sailors  preferred  the  freedom  of 
the  private  ships  to  the  strict  discipline  of  the  navy. 

The  pressgang  was  active,  and  many  an  exciting 
hunt  for  men  went  on  all  over  England.  The  sailors 
would  often  take  the  press  money — so  far  they  accepted 
the  system  favourably  enough — and  then  desert  ou 
their  way  to  the  dockyards.     c  Southwold/  said  Major 

L 


146  Robert  Blake 

Burton, '  was  beset  by  Colonel  Brewster's  troop,  but  the 
officers  of  the  town  were  so  base,  they  could  not  get  a 
man ;  as  fast  as  our  people  searched  one  part  of  the 
town,  they  got  into  the  other,  although  they  searched 
with  candles.'  The  dislike  of  the  men  for  the  naval 
discipline,  the  baseness  of  magistrates  in  the  seaports, 
mostly  themselves  merchants  and  shipowners,  and  the 
unpopularity  of  the  unhealthy  West  Indian  station, 
made  the  manning  of  the  fleets  to  lag.  The  comple- 
ment of  Blake  and  Montague's  fleet  was  at  last  made  up 
by  drafting  soldiers  on  board  in  the  proportion  of  one 
to  five  sailors — which  is  less  than  the  proportion  of 
marines  to  blue-jackets  usual  in  later  times.  After  all, 
they  left  England  better  manned  than  the  '  Montague ' 
(74)  which,  if  all  tales  be  true,  joined  Lord  Howe  just 
before  June  1,  with  thirteen  seamen  on  board,  and  a 
boy  who  had  been  fifteen  months  at  sea  as  captain  of 
the  fore-top. 

The  work  before  these  forty  ships  was  ultimately 
the  ruin  of  the  Spanish  trade  and  the  capture  of 
the  much-desired  Plate  ships ;  but  in  the  meantime 
a  basis  of  operations  had  to  be  secured.  The  most 
convenient  ports  for  the  purpose  were  the  Portuguese, 
and  as  the  Spaniards  were  still  making  sporadic  at- 
tempts to  reconquer  Portugal,  it  ought  to  have  been 
easy  enough  for  the  two  countries  to  come  to  an 
arrangement.  But  they  had  a  little  independent  quarrel 
of  their  own.  The  King  had  never  yet  settled  the 
disputes  begun  when  Blake  blockaded  Rupert  in  the 
Tagus.  He  refused  to  pay  the  indemnity  claimed  for 
the  merchants  whose  vessels  had  been  taken  by  the 
Eoyalist  cruisers  and  sold  at  Lisbon.     He  would  not 


Chasing  the  Plate  Ships  147 

hear  of  granting  religious  liberty  to  English  merchants 
resident  in  his  capital.  He  would  not  promise  to  send 
back  deserters  who  professed  to  have  become  Catholics. 
These  men  were  in  the  habit  of  claiming  their  pay,  and 
were  supported  by  the  Portuguese  authorities — i  which 
may  be  a  colour  for  any  knave  to  leave  his  duty,  or  for 
the  Roman  Catholics  to  seduce  our  men.'  Satisfaction 
on  these  points  had  been  promised  by  the  Portuguese 
Ambassador  in  London,  but  when  Mr.  Meadows  arrived 
at  Lisbon  to  secure  the  ratification  of  the  treaty,  it  was, 
in  the  words  of  Cromwell's  instructions  to  the  Admirals, 
refused  c  unless  we  will  agree  to  submit  this  article  to 
the  determination  of  the  Pope,'  and  this — horrible  sug- 
gestion!— amounts  to  an  attempt  to  'bring  us  to  an 
owning  of  the  Pope  ;  which  we  hope,  whatever  befall 
us,  we  shall  not,  by  the  grace  of  God,  be  brought  unto.' 
On  the  indemnity  question  the  King  may  have  thought 
that  the  loss  of  his  Brazil  fleet  in  1650  was  satisfaction 
enough.  It  is  strange  that  the  memory  of  the  events 
of  that  year  did  not  open  his  eyes  to  the  folly  of  resist- 
ance to  an  overwhelming  power,  but  it  has  never  been 
easy  to  persuade  the  Portuguese  that  they  are  the 
weakest.  There  is  a  not  unpleasant  little  fable  told  by 
their  neighbours,  the  Spaniards,  to  the  effect  that  a  cer- 
tain Portuguese  once  fell  into  a  dry  well,  and  there  broke 
both  his  legs  and  an  arm.  While  he  was  lying  in  this 
painful  state  there  came  by  a  Spaniard,  who  looked  down 
and  asked  what  was  the  matter.  Upon  this  the  Portu- 
guese replied,  '  Castilian,  if  you  will  help  me  out  of  the 
well  I  will  spare  your  life.'  This  was  much  the  frame 
of  mind  in  which  the  King  received  Mr.  Meadows. 
He  was  soon  brought  to  his  senses.     Blake  and  Mon- 

l  2 


148  Robert  Blake 

tague  came  to  support  the  ambassador,  and,  finding 
things  still  unsettled,  proceeded  to  carry  out  their 
instructions,  which  were  to  seize  the  Brazil  fleet  in  case 
the  Portuguese  proved  obstinate.  A  squadron  was  left 
to  lie  off  Cadiz  and  look  after  the  Spaniards.  Then  the 
bulk  of  the  fleet  took  up  the  cruising  stations  occupied 
by  Blake  and  Popham  six  years  before,  and  waited  for 
the  ships  coming  back  from  South  America.  This 
spectacle  caused  his  Most  Faithful  Majesty  to  reflect. 
With  forty  sail  of  English  cruisers  stationed  along  his 
coast,  there  was  no  chance  that  the  Brazil  fleet  could 
escape,  It  was  certain  to  blunder  into  the  middle  of 
them  as  it  had  done  in  1650.  The  loss  of  these  ships 
and  of  their  cargoes  would  have  spelt  bankruptcy  for 
his  Government  and  for  the  whole  trading  community 
of  Lisbon.  When  it  became  clear  to  him  that  this 
misfortune  was  the  alternative  to  accepting  Cromwell's 
terms,  the  King  at  last  yielded.  On  June  5  the  five 
years'  wriggling  of  the  Portuguese  came  to  an  end. 
The 4  Colchester'  went  into  Lisbon  to  receive  the  promised 
indemnity  of  50,000Z.,  equal  to  at  least  four  times  as 
much  of  our  money,  and  from  her  it  was  transferred 
into  the  '  Phcenix '  and  <  Sapphire,'  and  sent  to  England 
to  be  divided  among  the  merchants  whose  ships  had 
been  taken  off  the  Berlings  by  Maurice.  It  was  alto- 
gether a  very  rough,  high-handed  business  on  our  side 
from  first  to  last.  The  King  may  well  have  asked, 
with  the  purged  members  in  the  Queen's  Court,  by 
what  law  he  was  called  upon  to  refuse  to  accept  Rupert 
as  the  representative  of  the  legitimate  ruler  of  England, 
or  to  do  things  offensive  to  his  religious  opinions.  To 
which  no  answer  could  well  have  been  given  except  in 


Chasing  the  Plate  Ships  149 

the  words  of  Hugh  Peters,  c  by  the  law  of  Necessity ; 
truly  by  the  Power  of  the  Sword/  With  all  that,  it 
had  to  be  done.  It  was  no  longer  possible  for  any 
State  to  endure  the  barbarism  which  still  prevailed  in 
maritime  affairs.  Eupert  was  not  a  pirate,  though  the 
Parliament  was  logically  compelled  by  its  position  to 
call  him  one,  but  the  excuses  made  for  receiving  him 
were  of  the  kind  which  might  have  been  used  often 
enough  to  cover  much  protection  of  undoubted  piracy. 
When  was  a  foreign  State  to  cease  to  recognise  the 
commission  of  an  exiled  prince  ?  By  insisting  that  it 
should  not  be  recognised  at  all,  the  Long  Parliament 
and  Cromwell  at  least  established  a  precedent  which 
on  the  whole  worked  for  security  on  the  sea — in  future 
it  would  be  understood  that  neglect  of  the  rule  meant 
war,  and  the  issues  would  be  clear — a  very  great  gain 
for  the  cause  of  peace.  A  strict  application  of  the 
golden  rule  to  the  affairs  of  nations  would  perhaps 
condemn  interference  with  the  treatment  of  Protestants 
by  the  Portuguese  Government.  It  is  certain  that 
neither  the  Parliament  nor  Cromwell  would  have  en- 
dured the  meddling  of  Continental  powers  with  their 
policy  towards  the  Catholics.  Still,  they  were,  on  the 
whole,  advancing  the  cause  of  toleration  and  tacitly 
binding  themselves  to  give  the  freedom  they  demanded. 
In  helping  to  bring  the  Portuguese  to  submission  Blake 
was  actively  forwarding  one  of  the  greatest  changes  for  the 
better  made  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  completing 
the  work  begun  by  his  cruise  in  the  Mediterranean. 
Hitherto  traders  had  been  treated  abroad  as  interlopers, 
to  be  tolerated  in  most  cases,  but  still  as  needing  tole- 
ration.    They  had  been,  as  has  been  pointed  out  before. 


150  Robert  Blake 

left  very  much  to  shift  for  themselves  by  their  own 
Governments.  From  this  time  forward  a  wholly  different 
view  prevailed.  States  were  often  jealous  enough  in 
their  commercial  policy,  but  at  least  they  recognised  the 
foreigner's  right  to  do  whatever  he  was  not  expressly  for- 
bidden to  do.  They  also  began  to  act  on  the  principle  that 
a  civil  wrong  done  by  one  to  the  subjects  of  another  was 
not  only  a  fair  cause  of  war,  but  an  insult  which  the 
Government  of  the  aggrieved  side  could  not  tolerate 
without  dishonour.  All  the  teaching  of  all  the  moralists 
in  the  world  has  not  done  so  much  to  secure  fair  treat- 
ment for  residents  in  foreign  countries.  When  Govern- 
ments had  to  choose  between  treating  one  another's 
subjects  decently,  or  fighting,  they  would  prefer  the 
first  course  in  the  absence  of  some  independent  motive 
for  declaring  war. 

As  between  England  and  Portugal  themselves,  the 
result  of  this  vigorous  policy  was  a  firm  alliance.  The 
events  of  1650  and  1656  showed  the  Court  of  Lisbon 
how  completely  it  was  at  the  mercy  of  the  stronger 
power.  At  the  same  time  it  learnt  that  the  manifest 
interest  of  the  English  was  to  have  the  secure  use  of 
Portuguese  ports.  Between  weakness  on  one  side  and 
interest  on  the  other  was  made  the  alliance  which  was 
strengthened  by  Charles  the  Second's  marriage,  confirmed 
by  the  Methuen  treaty,  fostered  by  the  drinking  of  much 
port,  and  lasted  long  enough  to  give  the  British  armies 
a  battle-field  in  the  great  struggle  with  Napoleon.  The 
immediate  consequences  of  the  King's  surrender  were 
to  give  Blake  the  use  of  Lagos  Bay  to  careen  and  water 
his  ships  in. 


i5i 


CHAPTER   X. 

THE   CAPTURE   OF   THE   PLATE    SHIPS. 

The  winding  up  of  the  five  years'  quarrel  with  Portugal 
had  overlapped  the  beginning  of  the  operations  against 
Spain.  Blake  and  Montague  appear  to  have  proceeded 
straight  from  Torbay  to  Cadiz,  and  then  leaving  Stayner 
with  a  blockading  squadron  behind  them,  to  have  re- 
turned to  the  mouth  of  the  Tagus  to  support  the  diplo- 
macy of  Mr.  Meadows.  As  soon  as  the  '  Sapphire ' 
and  the  '  Phoenix  '  were  on  their  way  to  England  with 
the  50,000L,  they  returned  to  the  main  object  of  their 
expedition.  As  the  Bay  of  Biscay  seems  to  have  been 
included  in  their  station,  there  was  plenty  for  the  forty 
ships  under  their  command  to  do.  The  Basque  priva- 
teers were  nearly  the  only  efficient  naval  force  the  King 
of  Spain  had  at  his  disposal.  As  soon  as  the  war 
became  general  they  had  begun  capturing  English 
merchant  ships,  and  a  force  had  to  be  despatched  from 
before  Lisbon  to  cut  out  one  of  them  which  had  taken 
a  prize  into  Vigo  Bay.  As  some  too  speculative  and 
slightly  credulous  persons  in  our  time  have  had  occasion 
to  know,  Vigo  Bay  was  the  scene  of  not  the  least  re- 
markable incident  in  the  history  of  English  hunting  of 
Spanish  treasure,  but  in  this  war  nothing  very  famous 
was  done  in  its  waters. 


152  Robert  Blake 

It  was  six  weary  months  before  anything  effectual 
was  done  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Cadiz  itself.  The 
blockade  began  with  a  disappointment.  Our  fleet  ar- 
rived too  late  to  capture  four  Spanish  galleons  coming 
from  the  West  Indies,  and  they  had  the  further  vexa- 
tion of  learning  that  twenty-eight  sail,  three  of  which 
were  men-of-war,  had  left  for  America  in  safety. 
1  When  we  left  England,'  writes  Ths.  Pointer  of  the 
c  Speaker,'  c  we  expected  to  do  great  things ;  and  should 
have  done  but  for  slackness  and  false  intelligence.'  By 
slackness  Mr.  Pointer  probably  meant  the  delay  in 
fitting  the  ships  for  sea,  but  on  the  whole  the  Ad- 
mirals do  not  seem  to  have  suffered  much  from  want  of 
intelligence,  considering  how  difficult  it  must  have  been 
for  them  to  learn  what  the  Spaniards  were  doing. 
Little  was  to  be  learnt  through  Portugal,  and  even  less 
from  chance  neutrals  who  might  be  met  at  sea.  Per- 
haps they  used  the  resource  recommended  by  Sir 
William  Monson.  This  officer,  who  was  in  the  first  and 
the  last  fights  of  the  Elizabethan  war  with  Spain,  has 
explained  how  the  English  captains  contrived  to  obtain 
such  good  information  as  they  did  about  the  movements 
of  the  Spanish  ships.  During  the  whole  of  those  years 
of  avowed  war  (it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  ex- 
peditions of  Drake  and  Hawkins  were  conducted  in 
time  of  peace),  the  trade  between  Spain  and  England 
was  carried  on  by  Scotch  vessels,  or  by  English  vessels 
under  the  Scotch  flag.  These  craft  visited  the  islands, 
the  southern  ports  of  Spain,  and  Sallee,  which  had  a 
steady  intercourse  with  Seville,  in  great  numbers. 
When  the  existence  of  this  neutral  or  illicit  traffic  is 
remembered,  the  ruse  recommended  by  Sir  William  will 


The  Capture  of  the  Plate  Ships       153 

suggest  itself  at  once.  He  sent  small  craft  under  the 
Scotch  flag  into  the  Spanish  ports,  or  what  was  safer 
and  quite  as  effectual,  he  put  one  of  his  own  officers 
into  a  Scottish  ship.  The  Leith  or  Aberdeen  skipper 
who  happened  to  be  in  those  waters  would  always  be 
open  to  a  pecuniary  arrangement,  and  with  the  English 
smuggler  who  was  flying  the  St.  Andrew's  cross  there 
could  be  no  difficulty.  An  agent  was  even  kept  per- 
manently at  Sallee  to  send  regular  reports  of  all  that 
was  being  done  or  planned  at  Seville.  After  Dunbar 
there  was  no  St.  Andrew's  cross  flying  on  the  sea,  and 
Blake  must  have  been  so  far  hampered ;  but  with  Sallee 
he  had  relations  of  the  usual  kind  which  prevailed  with 
the  piratical  Barbary  States.  He  negotiated  with  its 
rulers,  fought  with  its  cruisers,  and  protected  trade 
with  its  merchants.  Tangier,  still  in  the  possession  of 
Portugal,  was  open  to  his  ships,  and  regularly  used 
as  a  watering  place.  Between  the  two  he  may  well 
have  learnt  whatever  was  to  be  learnt  about  the  move- 
ments of  the  Spaniards. 

For  the  rest,  there  was  little  enough  to  be  discovered 
which  his  own  look-out  men  could  not  have  seen  from 
the  masthead  across  the  narrow  spit  of  land  which  con- 
nects the  rocky  peninsula  of  Cadiz  with  the  Isla  de 
Leon.  The  Spaniards  had  unrigged  their  galleons,  and 
laid  them  up  in  the  inner  harbour,  or  dragged  them 
into  the  Carraca.  There  they  were  to  be  seen  un- 
rigged, unarmed,  unmanned,  rotting  ignobly.  Like 
Napoleon  a  hundred  and  sixty  years  later,  the  autho- 
rities at  Madrid  had  decided  to  see  whether  a  blockade 
would  not  wear  the  English  fleet  out.  In  their  case 
the  calculation  was  better  grounded  than  his,  for  in  the 


1 54  Robert  Blake 

seventeenth  century  the  use  of  copper  to  sheath  the 
hulls  of  ships  had  not  been  discovered,  and  a  very 
moderate  term  of  cruising  covered  their  bottoms  with 
barnacles,  which  destroyed  their  sailing  power.  They 
had  to  return  continually  to  port  to  be  scraped.  Deli- 
berate calculation  may  have  had  very  little  to  do  with 
the  idleness  of  the  Spanish  fleet.  It  can  be  adequately 
accounted  for  by  the  penury  of  the  Government.  The 
miserable  poverty  of  the  masters  of  boundless  gold  and 
silver  had  reached  such  a  point  that  in  the  previous  year 
the  galleons  had  only  been  equipped  by  the  voluntary 
contributions  of  the  merchants  of  Seville.  In  1656 
the  Spanish  Government  was  on  the  verge  of  the  act 
of  bankruptcy  which  completed  its  financial  ruin.  By 
necessity,  as  much  as  by  choice,  it  decided  to  play  the 
waiting  game.  The  garrisons  of  the  seaports  were 
strengthened — it  was  easier  to  press  soldiers  who  were 
hardly  fed,  scarcely  dressed,  and  never  paid,  than  to 
equip  galleons;  something  was  done  to  improve  the 
fortifications,  and  then  the  Court  of  Philip  IV.  waited 
to  see  whether  wind,  and  waves,  and  barnacles  would 
not  rid  it  of  the  English  fleet. 

The  barnacles  did  not  stick  tighter  to  the  bottoms 
of  Blake's  ships  than  his  squadron  to  the  mouth  of 
Cadiz  harbour.  For  months  the  English  ships  stood 
in  daily,  reconnoitred  the  outer  harbour,  stood  out  at 
night  to  a  safe  distance,  and  lay  to  till  daylight.  With 
the  early  morning  there  came  a  certain  amount  of 
diversion,  at  least  during  the  early  times  of  the  blockade. 
When  the  bulk  of  the  Spanish  ships  had  been  dis- 
armed and  laid  up,  three  galleys  were  still  kept  in 
commission,  possibly  because  the  alcalde  and  the  cor- 


The  Capture  of  the  Plate  Ships       155 

regidor  did  not  know  what  else  to  do  with  the  slaves. 
Every  calm  night  these  three  poor  representatives  of  a 
great  navy  slipped  out  of  port  to  see  if  they  could  not 
find  one  of  the  blockading  fleet  to  worry,  and  every 
morning,  when  the  sea  was  smooth,  they  pegged  away 
at  one  or  another  of  the  English  ships  with  the  big  gun 
they  carried  in  their  sharp  ugly  snouts.  A  hundred 
and  fifty  years  later,  when  Collingwood  was  engaged  in 
the  same  work  as  Blake,  he  was  annoyed  in  a  similar 
fashion.  Under  favourable  circumstances  the  galleys 
were  not  altogether  contemptible  enemies.  They  were 
long  low  craft,  rowed  by  hundreds  of  slaves.  One 
heavy  gun  mounted  in  the  bows  formed  their  whole 
armament.  When  a  dead  calm  kept  the  line-of-battle 
ships  idle,  they  could  creep  round  to  the  stern  of  any 
one  which  was  isolated,  take  up  a  position  out  of  reach 
of  the  guns  of  the  others,  and  fire  into  their  big  enemy, 
who  was  as  nearly  as  might  be  helpless.  But  at  best 
they  could  do  little  more  than  fret  the  blockading  fleet. 
They  were  compelled  to  keep  their  road  home  open,  for 
the  slightest  puff  of  wind  which  could  fill  the  sails  of 
the  line-of-battle  ships  would  bring  the  galleys  under 
the  fire  of  broadsides,  and  then  there  was  nothing  for 
it  but  to  show  a  clean  pair  of  heels.  The  fight  was  too 
unequal  between  one  gun  in  the  bows  and  forty  in  the 
side,  and  between  vessels  purposely  built  as  light  as 
possible,  and  great  ships  constructed  to  stand  the 
roughest  usage  of  storm  and  battle.  The  galleys  had 
learnt  their  weakness  before  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  Francis  Drake  had  given  them  a  memorable 
lesson  in  Cadiz  Bay  itself,  when  he  was  about  singeing 
the  King  of  Spain's  beard.     In  1590  twelve  of  them 


156  Robert  Blake 

had  come  to  sad  grief  in  an  attack  on  ten  merchant 
ships  belonging  to  the  Levant  Company.  The  galleys 
of  the  King,  commanded  by  John  Andrew  Doria,  a 
grandson  of  Charles  V.'s  famous  admiral,  were  com- 
pletely beaten  by  the  English  traders  who  scarcely 
suffered  at  all  in  the  fight.  During  six  hours  their  fire 
swept  the  decks  and  pierced  the  hulls  of  the  galleys,  till 
Doria  had  enough,  and  fled  into  port  at  the  best  speed 
his  surviving  slaves — for  the  broadsides  must  have  made 
a  dreadful  butchery  among  the  closely  packed  banks — 
could  be  flogged  into  giving  his  damaged  vessels.  After 
this  the  galleys  never  ventured  to  attack  sailing  ships 
except  in  a  calm.  In  1656  they  hardly  did  even  all 
they  could.  Their  commanders  were  heartily  afraid  of 
Blake's  broadsides,  and  kept  at  such  a  respectful  dis- 
tance that  these  encounters  led  to  nothing  but  waste  of 
powder  and  shot.  It  may  have  been  some  consolation 
to  the  Spaniards  to  see  their  flag  flying  at  all  on  the 
smooth  blue  water  outside  of  Cadiz,  and  the  sound  of 
the  guns  may  have  provided  the  people  of  the  town 
with  emotions,  but  for  the  English  it  must  have  been 
tepid  fun  to  throw  away  good  ammunition  on  such 
feeble  and  cowardly  enemies.  The  worst  of  it  was  that 
the  galleys,  despicable  as  they  were  at  sea,  made  it 
impossible  for  the  English  boats  to  try  any  enterprise 
in  the  harbour.  Launches  and  cutters  would  have 
been  run  down  by  them  easily  enough. 

With  nothing  to  be  done  for  the  moment  but  wait, 
the  English  fleet  could  spend  its  leisure  in  making  plans 
for  the  capture  of  Spanish  ports  and  speculating  on  the 
advantages  to  be  got  by  seizing  one.  The  letters  of 
Pointer  of  the  '  Speaker '  prove  that  the  officers  were  of 


The  Capture  of  the  Plate  Ships       157 

opinion  that  Cadiz  with  its  unrigged  fleet  was  a  prize 
worth  the  employment  of  six  or  even  ten  thousand 
soldiers.  Cromwell  was  not  without  hopes  of  seeing  it 
taken  by  the  ships  alone.  As  early  as  April  he  wrote  to 
the  Admirals,  inquiring  '  Whether  now  it  might  not  be 
worthy  to  be  weighed  by  you,  and  your  council  of  war, 
whether  this  fleet  of  theirs  [i.e.  the  Spaniards]  might 
not  be  burnt  or  otherwise  destroyed  ?  Whether  Puntal 
and  the  forts  are  so  considerably  stronger  as  to  dis- 
courage from  such  an  attempt  ?  Whether  Cadiz  itself 
be  unattemptable ;  or  the  island  on  which  it  stands  be 
noways  to  be  separated  from  relieving  the  town  by  the 
bridge,  the  island  being  so  narrow  in  some  parts  of  it  ? 
Whether  any  other  place  be  attemptable  ;  especially 
that  of  the  town  and  castle  of  Gibraltar, — which  if 
possessed  and  made  tenable  by  us,  would  it  not  be  both 
an  advantage  to  our  trade  and  an  annoyance  to  the 
Spaniard;  and  enable  us  without  keeping  so  great  a 
fleet  on  that  coast,  with  six  nimble  frigates  lodged  there 
to  do  the  Spaniard  more  harm  than  by  a  fleet,  and  ease 
our  own  charges  ? ' 

Unfortunately  Cromwell  was,  in  his  own  words,  c  dis- 
coursing probabilities'  too  soon,  though  in  a  highly 
sagacious  fashion.  Cadiz  might  have  been  isolated  from 
the  Isla  de  Leon  with  ease,  which  is  what  is  meant  by 
the  wrongheaded  phrase  about  separating  the  island 
from  relieving  the  town  by  the  bridge,  as  Mr.  Carlyle, 
reading  with  second  sight,  explains.  It  stands  on  the 
bowl  of  a  spoon  with  a  long  narrow  handle.  To  land 
on  the  handle,  and  so  isolate  the  bowl,  would  have  been 
easy  enough  for  a  body  of  troops,  but  it  was  useless 
to   try  it   with   sailors   alone.     For   the   same  reason. 


158  Robert  Blake 

Cromwell's  prophetic  suggestion  as  to  Gibraltar  could 
not  be  acted  on.  Montague,  who  answered  this  letter  for 
himself  and  his  colleague,  pointed  out  that  with  six 
thousand  men  either  place  could  be  taken  with  no  great 
difficulty.  It  would  not  be  necessary  to  besiege  them 
in  form,  for  the  Spaniards  notoriously  never  victualled  a 
town  for  more  than  a  month,  and  any  force  which  could 
hold  its  ground  for  that  time  would  have  been  sure  of 
getting  them  by  starvation.  In  the  state  of  feebleness 
to  which  Spain  had  sunk,  six  thousand  men  would  have 
been  amply  sufficient  to  occupy  the  neck  of  the  pen- 
insulas on  which  both  Cadiz  and  Gibraltar  stand.  The 
fleet  would  have  answered  for  preventing  relief  by  sea  • 
but  without  soldiers  it  was  useless  to  attempt  the  enter- 
prise. The  events  of  the  war  of  the  Spanish  Succession 
amply  justified  the  caution  of  the  Admirals.  Even  then, 
when  Spain  was  still  feebler  than  in  1656,  Ormond's 
attempt  to  rush  Cadiz  was  repulsed  by  Villadarias  and 
his  c  rascally  foot  militia.'  Kooke  had  a  strong  body  of 
soldiers  with  him  when  he  surprised  Gibraltar;  and 
better  still,  he  caught  the  whole  Spanish  garrison  hearing 
mass  outside  the  walls  when  his  men  scrambled  up  the 
Rock. 

When  it  became  clear  that  nothing  could  be  done 
against  the  towns  without  more  soldiers  than  could 
then  be  spared,  and  that  the  Spaniards  were  not  coming 
to  sea,  it  was  decided  in  England  to  recall  part  of  the 
fleet.  Ten  ships  seem  to  have  gone  back  in  summer, 
and  in  August  Cromwell  ordered  Montague  home  to 
consult,  and  Blake  to  remain  with  twenty  ships  on  the 
coast.  A  certain  margin  of  discretion  was  left  to  the 
Admirals.     They  were  authorised  to  modify  their  orders 


The  Capture  op  the  Plate  Ships       159 

if  they  saw  a  chance  of  doing  any  stroke  of  service 
immediately ;  but  Cromwell  made  his  own  wishes  per- 
fectly clear,  and  Montague  at  least  was  hardly  likely  to 
go  out  of  his  way  to  find  reasons  for  not  complying 
with  them.  Just  as  the  time  came  for  him  to  return  to 
England,  a  turn  in  the  long  ill-luck  of  the  fleet  enabled 
the  Admirals  to  combine  a  piece  of  effective  service 
with  punctual  obedience  to  Cromwell's  orders.  In 
September  the  Plate  ships  turned  up  at  last. 

Whether  through  want  of  information,  or  by  the 
rashness  of  their  commander,  or  because  the  Court  at 
Madrid  was  in  such  desperate  want  of  money  that  they 
must  needs  run  all  hazards  to  supply  it,  or  because  they 
i  hoped  their  European  coasts  to  find  cleared  from  our 
ships  by  the  autumnal  wind,'  eight  of  these  galleons, 
with  their  priceless  cargoes,  came  on  from  Santa  Cruz. 
Even  now  they  nearly  slipped  through  the  fingers  of 
the  blockading  squadron.  There  is  no  better  hiding 
place  than  the  sea.  In  the  finest  weather  a  few  miles  of 
distance  will  conceal  fleets  from  one  another  completely, 
and  when  there  is  a  haze  over  the  water,  they  may  pass 
within  hearing  distance  and  never  know  it.  It  is  one 
of  the  dramatic  incidents  of  the  great  French  Revolution- 
ary wars,  that  Nelson  crossed  the  track  of  Napoleon's 
fleet  on  its  way  to  Egypt  in  the  middle  watch  of  one 
hazy  night.  He  was  so  close  to  his  chance  of  c  catching 
Boney  on  a  wind  '  that  the  sound  of  the  bells  struck 
as  fog  signals  on  his  ships  was  heard  by  the  French- 
men. They  went  on  their  way  in  nervous  quiet,  and  by 
sunrise  the  fleets  were  out  of  sight  of  one  another.  The 
hard  fate  of  the  galleons  was  made  harder  by  the  fact 
that  they  had  nearly  been  as  fortunate  as  the  squadron 


160  Robert  Blake 

and  convoy  of  Admiral  Brueys.  On  the  night  of  Sep- 
tember 8  they  passed  safely  through  the  English  fleet 
which  would  be  stretched  across  the  Straits.  The  reports 
of  the  action  are  as  usual  meagre  and  contradictory. 
According  to  one  story,  the  Spaniards  were  chased  by 
Stayner  during  the  night,  and  attacked  next  morning. 
According  to  another,  they  were  only  sighted  at  day- 
break, and  might  have  escaped  altogether  if  the  flagship 
had  not  fired  a  salute  when  in  sight  of  San  Lucar,  and 
so  attracted  attention. 

This  later  version,  which  Waller  may  well  have  heard 
from  Montague,  is  the  more  probable  of  the  two.  The 
galleons  would  naturally  do  what  had  been  done  formerly 
under  the  same  circumstances.  They  would  hug  the 
north-east  coast  of  Africa,  which  is  often  hazy,  and  is 
sometimes  visited  by  fogs  as  dense  as  those  of  Newfound- 
land. Under  the  cover  of  this  friend]y  shelter,  they 
could  get  between  the  English  ships  and  the  shore  of 
Morocco,  reach  the  mouth  of  the  Straits  unseen,  and 
then  stand  over  to  Cadiz.  With  this  help  or  without, 
the  eight  treasure-ships  arrived  within  sight  of  San 
Lucar  de  Barrameda  unstopped.  Their  own  coast  was 
before  them,  a  safe  port  at  hand,  and  no  English  to  be 
seen.  Cadiz  was  only  a  few  miles  to  the  south-east,  and 
right  in  front  of  them  was  the  entrance  to  the  G  uadal- 
quivir,  the  river  of  Seville.  They  might  well  think  that 
the  dangers  of  their  long  voyage  were  over,  and  fire  a 
feu  de  pie.  But  at  that  very  moment  their  fate  came 
upon  them.  Stayner  was  in  the  immediate  neighbour- 
hood with  his  own  ship  the '  Speaker,'  and  the  c  Bridge- 
water  '  and  '  Plymouth  '  frigates.  He  either  sighted  the 
Spaniards  or  heard  their  salute,  and  bore  down  at  once. 


The  Capture  of  the  Plate  Ships       161 

The  engagement  which  followed  was  possibly  one  of 
those  which  Captain  Lemnel  Gulliver  told  to  the  King 
of  Brobdingnag,  and  it  was  certainly  marked  by  inci- 
dents calculated  to  help  that  humane  monarch  to  make 
up  his  mind  as  to  the  merits  of  the  c  most  pernicious  race 
of  little  odious  vermin.'  As  a  fight  it  was  one-sided 
from  the  beginning.  Stayner's  three  ships  attacked  the 
galleons  furiously,  apparently  with  quite  as  much  wish 
to  destroy  as  to  capture.  Outnumbered  as  they  were 
by  more  than  two  to  one,  they  routed  their  enemy  with 
a  very  trifling  loss.  The  Spaniards  seem  to  have  stuck 
to  their  guns  pluckily,  but  want  of  discipline,  bad 
gunnery,  and  perhaps  the  fact  that  their  decks  were 
hampered  with  cargo,  left  them  at  the  mercy  of  their 
expert,  alert,  and  hungry  assailants.  In  a  few  hours 
most  of  the  eight  galleons  had  been  sunk,  burnt,  taken, 
or  driven  on  shore.  Only  two,  or  even  only  one,  if  all 
tales  be  true,  escaped  either  into  San  Lucar  or  Puerto  de 
Santa  Maria,  for  they  can  hardly  have  got  into  Cadiz. 
The  fate  of  the  Capitana,  as  the  Spaniards  call  the 
flagship,  was  especially  cruel.  She  carried  the  Marquis 
of  Badajos,  who  had  been  Viceroy  of  Mexico,  and  was 
returning  home  in  command  of  the  treasure  fleet.  The 
marquis  had  his  family  on  board,  and  all  the  property 
he  possessed  in  the  world,  for  his  family  was  one  of 
the  poorest  among  the  Spanish  nobility.  When  the 
•  Speaker '  ranged  up  alongside  him,  the  Spaniard 
fought  his  ship  stoutly,  but  with  no  more  success  than 
his  captains.  In  a  short  time  the  Capitana  was  on 
fire.  It  is  to  the  honour  of  the  unfortunate  man  that 
his  enemies  believed  he  fired  her  himself,  to  disappoint 
the  English  of  their  prize.     He  had  probably  no  need 

M 


1 62  Robert  Blake 

to  commit  this  act  of  desperation,  for  the  fire  was  only 
too  likely  to  break  out  in  a  ship  full  of  inflammable 
cargo,  manned  by  seamen  so  careless  as  the  Spaniards 
have  always  been,  and  particularly  at  a  time  when  it 
was  still  the  custom  to  bring  gunpowder  barrels  on  to 
the  deck,  and  serve  the  powder  out  with  a  ladle.  When 
the  disaster  had  happened,  the  marquis  did  at  least 
set  an  example  not  unbecoming  a  grandee  of  Spain. 
He  refused  to  leave  his  ship,  and  remained  to  perish  in 
her  with  his  wife.  Before  the  flames  had  gained  the 
cabins,  he  threw  his  children  into  the  water,  in  hope 
that  they  might  cling  to  spars  till  picked  up  by  the 
English  boats.  It  is  satisfactory  to  know  that  some  of 
them  were  saved,  and  were  treated  with  humanity  by 
the  captors.  He  himself  met  the  horrible  death  he 
faced  so  manfully.  Exactly  sixteen  years  later,  one  of 
the  English  officers  who  helped  to  bring  the  Marquis 
of  Badajos  to  his  death,  was  man  enough  to  follow  his 
example.  In  1672,  during  the  disgraceful  Dutch  war, 
Montague,  then  Earl  of  Sandwich,  was  left  alone  on 
board  his  blazing  flagship  in  Solebay,  and  he,  too,  chose 
to  die  where  he  was  rather  than  desert  his  post. 

The  marquis  could  do  no  more  than  be  beaten  with 
honour.  About  one-half  of  his  convoy  fell  into  Stayner's 
hands,  and  the  captured  galleons  rewarded  the  English 
fleet  for  the  weariness  of  the  long  blockade.  They  were 
a  magnificent  prize.  Over  and  above  the  goods  on 
board,  which  must  have  been  of  great  value,  no  less  a 
sum  than  600,000Z.  was  found  in  actual  bullion.  It  was 
in  coin  and  ingots  of  silver  c  like  sugar  loaves '  in  shape. 
Montague  himself  had  the  pleasing  task  of  carrying  it 
home  to  Portsmouth,  where  it  was  loaded  in  waggons 


The  Capture  of  the  Plate  Ships       163 

and  carried  up  to  London.  A  guard  of  ten  soldiers 
conducted  the  booty  through  the  streets  of  Southwark 
to  the  Tower,  where  it  was  deposited  till  the  Mint  could 
turn  it  into  coin.  The  silver  does  not  seem  to  have 
reached  England  exactly  as  it  was  taken,  for  Montague 
himself  had  to  report  that  there  had  been  c  some  mis- 
carriages by  the  ships  which  did  take  the  ships  of 
Spain.'  In  plain  English,  some  of  the  sailors  had  been 
drawing  their  share  of  prize-money  in  advance,  not 
altogether  without  excuse,  since  the  Government  of  the 
Protectorate,  in  its  great  need  of  money,  was  only  too 
likely  to  follow  the  example  set  on  a  similar  occasion  by 
Elizabeth,  and  deal  but  indifferently  with  the  captors 
of  the  welcome  bullion.  Their  pilferings,  as  far  as  they 
did  actually  pilfer,  cannot  have  been  of  any  great  impor- 
tance. The  bulk  of  the  silver  found  its  way  to  the 
Tower,  and  there  were  no  such  charges  made  against 
the  Admirals  as  were  brought  on  only  too  solid  evidence 
against  Montague  in  the  second  Dutch  war.  In 
England  he  was  received  with  the  honours  and  praise 
to  which  he  had  no  better  right  than  Blake,  and  much 
less  right  than  Stayner.  He  was  thanked  by  the 
House  and  praised  by  Waller,  who  does  not  even  name 
Blake  or  Stayner. 

With  these  returns  victorious  Montagu, 
With  laurels  in  his  hand,  and  half  Peru. 
Let  the  brave  generals  divide  that  bough, 
Our  great  Protector  hath  such  wreaths  enow, 
His  conquering  head  has  no  more  room  for  bays, 
Then  let  it  be  as  the  glad  nation  prays. 
Let  the  rich  ore  forthwith  be  melted  down, 
And  the  State  fixed  by  making  him  a  crown, 

x  2 


164  Robert  Blake 

With  ermine  clad  and  purple,  let  him  hold 
A  royal  sceptre,  made  of  Spanish  gold. 

Neither  the  Spanish  gold  nor  the  men  who  took  it 
conld  fix  the  State  in  that  way,  but  they  did  it  very 
essential  service.  Six  hundred  thousand  pounds  was 
equal  to  at  least  one  fourth  of  the  yearly  revenue  of  the 
Protectorate,  and  to  get  possession  of  that  sum  at  once 
and  in  a  lump,  was  a  very  sensible  relief  to  its  finances 
even  when  the  prize-money  due  to  the  sailors  had  been 
deducted. 


i6S 


CHAPTER   XI. 

SANTA   CRUZ   DE   TENERIFE. 

The  last  year  of  Blake's  life  was  spent  in  a  blockade  of 
Cadiz,  broken  by  a  swift  cruise  to  the  south-west,  and 
one  day  of  battle.  On  April  20  he  made  his  attack  on 
the  Spaniards  at  Santa  Cruz,  and  then  returned  to  his 
cruising  ground  to  wait  for  leave  to  come  home.  These 
twelve  months  were  the  most  important  to  his  fame  in 
all  his  fourteen  years  of  service  by  sea  and  land,  for  his 
last  fight  was  also  his  greatest.  If  he  had  died  in  the 
beginning  of  1656,  he  would  still  have  left  a  reputation 
as  a  warrior  second  only  to  Cromwell's,  but  he  would 
not  have  taken  his  place  as  the  mosb  intrepid  and 
original  chief  who  ever  handled  an  English  fleet  till  Sir 
Edward  Hawke  took  his  squadron  into  the  rocks  on  the 
coast  of  Brittany.  The  defence  of  Taunton,  the  battles 
with  Tromp  and  De  Euyter,  the  destruction  of  the 
pirate  ships  at  Porto  Farina,  were  great  feats,  but  none 
of  them  so  excited  the  admiration  of  his  contemporaries, 
or  have  been  so  vividly  remembered,  as  the  attack  on 
the  Spaniards  under  the  Peak  of  Tenerife.  Even  now, 
when  the  battles  of  the  Nile  and  of  Copenhagen  are 
there  to  be  compared  with  it,  the  action  of  Santa  Cruz 
seems  to  deserve  the  almost  hyperbolical  language  of 
Clarendon. 

Blake  was  at  all  times  most   daring  when  he  was 


1 66  Robert  Blake 

alone  in  command.     He  had  bad  no  colleague  when  he 
engaged  a  Dutch  fleet  twice  as  strong  as  his  own  off 
Dungeness,  nor  when  he  sailed  into  Tunis.     He  was 
unhampered  again  when  news  reached  him   off  Cadiz 
that  a  fleet  of  sixteen  treasure-ships  had  put  into  Santa 
Cruz,  and  were  waiting  in  that  place  of  supposed  safety 
for  a  chance  to  run  over  to  the   coast  of  Spain.     The 
Spanish  governor  and  admiral  were  fully  justified  by 
their  experience  of  naval  war   as  it  had  been  hitherto 
conducted,  in  believing  that  their  charge  was  in  absolute 
safety  under  the    guns    of  their  fortifications.     Santa 
Cruz  is  a  deep  and   narrow-mouthed  bay.     Forts  had 
been  built  on  both  sides  of  the  entrance  and  at  several 
points  of  the  shore.   They  were  armed  with  the  heaviest 
ordnance  then  in  use,  placed  so  as  to  bring  a  converging 
fire  to  bear  on  any  squadron  attempting  to  enter.    With 
a  fleet  in  the  harbour,  these  could  be  reinforced  by  the 
ships'  guns.     It  was  small  blame  to  the  Spaniards  if 
they  thought  that  no  man  in  his   senses  would  expose 
his    ships    to    such  a  fire    as  they  could  pour  on  any 
assailants.     But  the  forts,  guns,  and  ships  were  not  the 
only  defence    of   Santa    Cruz.     Before  they  could   be 
attacked  there  was  a  natural  obstacle  to  be  overcome. 
1  The  approach  by  sea  to  the  anchoring  place,'  the  words 
are  Nelson's,   i  is  under  very  high  land,  passing  three 
valleys ;  therefore  the  wind  is  either  in  from  the  sea,  or 
squally  with  calms  from  the  mountains.'     A   fleet  de- 
signing to  attack  the   anchorage  must  face  the  risk  of 
finding  itself  becalmed  within  range  of  the  guns  of  the 
forts.    Even  if  the  sea  breeze  took  it  in,  there  was  always 
a  danger  that  retreat  would  be  impossible.  The  Spaniards 
had  therefore  good  ground  for  trusting  not  only  to  their 


Santa  Cruz  de  Tenerife  167 

strength  but  to  the  difficulty  of  getting  at  them,  as 
sufficient  defences  against  any  enterprise  on  the  part  of 
the  English  fleet.  Only  a  very  modest  estimate  of  their 
own  gunnery  could  have  caused  them  to  feel  the  slightest 
doubt  as  to  the  consequences  of  an  attack,  and  so  much 
diffidence  was  not  to  be  expected  from  your  Don,  a 
person  notoriously  '  altogether  unparalleled  in  his  own 
conceit.'  The  governor,  Don  Diego  Diagues,  is  said  to 
have  been  warned  by  some  Dutch  traders  in  the  harbour 
that  an  attack  would  be  made,  and  to  have  laughed  at 
the  warning,  telling  them  to  take  themselves  off  if  they 
were  afraid.  The  Hollanders,  who  knew  the  intrepid 
character  of  Blake,  were  prudent  enough  to  weigh  and 
stand  to  sea  before  the  English  fleet  sailed  in.  The  tale 
has  all  the  look  of  an  embellishment  invented  to  adorn 
the  victory  and  give  point  to  the  daring  of  the  adventure, 
but  if  the  remonstrance  was  uttered,  it  would  naturally 
be  treated  pretty  much  in  this  way. 

The  Spanish  governor  did  find  that  Blake  was  mad 
enough  to  attack  him.  As  is  usually  the  case  with  the 
successfully  daring  operations  of  war,  there  was  a  large 
element  of  calculation  in  the  Admiral's  apparent  rash- 
ness. Nelson,  who  taught  by  example  as  well  as  by 
precept,  was  in  the  habit  of  saying  that  a  sailor  was 
never  brave  enough  unless  he  was  half-mad,  but  then, 
he  understood  that  there  was  to  be  method  in  the  mad- 
ness. No  man  ever  estimated  all  the  chances  for  or 
against  success  in  any  enterprise  more  carefully  than 
Nelson  himself,  and  what  he  called  by  the  violent  name 
of  semi-insanity  was  that  rapidity  of  execution  which 
is  the  best  of  all  kinds  of  secrecy,  c  like  the  motion  of  a 
bullet  in  the  air  which  flieth  so  swift  as  it  outruns  the 


1 68  Robert  Blake 

eye.'  Blake  did  not  tell  the  secrets  of  his  craft  to  the 
world,  like  his  great  successor,  but  he  must  have  calcu- 
lated as  every  great  captain  has  done.  Looked  at  by  a 
man  who  could  judge  coolly,  and  was  not  to  be  fright- 
ened by  a  brag  countenance,  the  position  of  the  Spaniards 
was  much  less  strong  than  they  imagined.  Their  fleet 
was  anchored  in  two  divisions.  Ten  small  ships  had 
been  drawn  close  to  the  shore  in  a  half-circle.  Outside  of 
them,  and  anchored  with  their  broadsides  to  the  sea, 
were  the  six  great  galleons.  A  glance  must  have  shown 
Blake  that  by  this  arrangement  the  Spaniards  had  in 
fact  masked  the  batteries  at  the  bottom  of  the  Bay  and 
the  fire  of  the  smaller  ships.  They  could  not  use  their 
guns  without  firing  into  their  own  countrymen.  When 
the  English  were  once  in  the  Bay,  the  fight  would  be 
with  the  six  galleons  mainly,  and  Stayner's  action  off 
San  Lucar  de  Barrameda  had  shown  how  easily  they 
could  be  mastered  when  resolutely  tackled.  The  closer 
home  the  attack  was  pushed,  the  fewer  would  be  the 
number  of  guns  the  Spaniards  could  use.  It  would  be 
necessary  to  run  the  gauntlet  of  the  castles  at  the 
mouth  of  the  bay,  but  with  regard  to  them  also  the 
closest  place  was  the  safest.  When  once  the  English 
fleet  was  in,  the  guns  of  the  forts  which  pointed  sea- 
ward would  be  harmless.  What  was  needed  to  make 
the  attack  possible  was  a  combination  of  a  good  sea 
breeze  with  a  flowing  tide,  and  then  the  fleet  could 
sweep  in  and  do  its  work  of  destruction,  trusting  to 
the  efficiency  of  its  cannonade  to  beat  down  the  fire  of 
the  castles  before  the  ebb  came  to  float  it  out.  Blake 
must  also  have  calculated,  as  he  was  well  entitled  to  do, 
on  the  bad  gunnery  of  the  Spaniards. 


Santa  Cruz  de  Tenerife  169 

Wind  and  tide  suited  on  the  morning  of  April  20, 
when  Blake  reached  the  Bay  and  stood  in  at  once  under 
a  press  of  canvas.  The  van  division  was  led  by  Stayner, 
who  had  orders  to  attack  the  galleons  while  Blake  him- 
self directed  the  attack  on  the  castles.  The  order  of 
battle  is  not  known,  but  the  English  ships  must  have 
entered  the  Bay  in  line,  and  taken  up  their  positions 
with  the  utmost  precision.  Stayner's  squadron  must 
have  come  to  the  wind  to  bring  themselves  broadside 
to  broadside  with  the  galleons,  and  have  then  anchored 
by  the  head  and  stern  to  keep  themselves  steady.  The 
supporting  ships  would  anchor  by  the  stern  opposite 
the  batteries,  so  as  to  cover  the  van  and  protect  it  from 
a  raking  fire.  During  four  hours  the  battle  raged 
chiefly  with  the  galleons.  On  board  the  smaller  ships 
and  in  many  of  the  batteries,  the  Spanish  gunners  must 
have  stood  idle,  watching  the  battle  in  the  middle  of  the 
harbour  as  well  as  the  clouds  of  smoke  rolled  on  shore 
by  the  sea  breeze  would  allow  them.  The  unmasked 
batteries  were  swept  by  the  fire  of  Blake's  gunners. 
When  the  smoke  lifted,  it  was  because  the  six  galleons 
had  struck  one  after  another.  Then  the  English  crews 
boarded  and  drove  the  Spaniards  out,  to  swim  on  shore 
or  drown  on  the  way.  For  the  moment  this  success 
only  increased  the  danger  of  Blake's  position.  The 
Spaniards  could  now  use  all  their  guns  with  the 
certainty  that  they  could  only  hit  an  enemy.  The 
galleons  would  still  screen  the  English  ships,  but  the 
prize  crews  must  have  suffered  heavily.  It  was  found 
impossible  to  bring  out  the  captured  treasure-ships. 
Even  if  their  sails  were  not  unbent,  as  is  very  possible, 
and  men  enough  could  have  been  spared  to  get  them 


170  Robert  Blake 

under  weigh,  which,  is  barely  credible,  it  would  have 
been  impossible  to  tack  them  out  of  the  crowded  Bay 
against  the  sea  breeze.  Orders  were  given  to  fire  them. 
When  the  flames  had  caught,  the  English,  in  the  con- 
fidence of  their  proved  superiority,  fell  on  the  small 
ships  anchored  under  the  forts,  and  fired  them  also. 
By  this  time  the  tide  had  begun  to  turn,  and  our  fleet 
drifted  out,  leaving  the  sixteen  galleons  and  pataches 
blazing  in  a  great  semicircle  between  them  and  the 
batteries.  At  this  moment,  Heaven,  as  they  believed, 
showed  its  favour  for  the  servants  of  God  who  had 
turned  the  harbour  of  Antichrist  into  a  pandemonium, 
and  so  dreadfully  humbled  his  pride.  The  wind,  which 
had  blown  steadily  into  the  Bay  up  to  that  moment, 
veered  round  when  the  fight  was  over,  and  began  to 
blow  equally  steadily  off  the  land.  It  was  not  squally 
with  calms,  from  the  mountains,  but  a  strong  even 
breeze  before  which  the  English  fleet  regained  its 
station  off  Cadiz  with  ease.  Blake's  ships  had  shattered 
the  forts,  sunk  the  ships,  and  got  free  of  the  harbour 
before  the  wind  turned,  but  its  opportuneness  and  the 
trifling  price  paid  for  the  victory  went  to  make  up  the 
marvellous  character  of  the  fight.  Their  total  loss  in 
killed  and  wounded  had  been  less  than  two  hundred 
men.  The  loss  of  the  Spaniards  is  said  to  have  been 
frightful,  and  it  is  easy  to  believe  that  it  was. 

Since  Gustavus  Adolphus  had  routed  Tilly  at 
Breitenfeld,  no  battle  had  so  startled  the  world  as  this. 
It  was  a  revelation  of  what  mighty  things  could  be 
done  by  a  well-handled  fleet.  Clarendon,  who  had  to 
write  much  of  brave  men  and  brave  fights,  speaks  of 
none  of  them  as  he  does  of  the  attack  on  Santa  Cruz. 


Santa  Cruz  de  Ienerife  171 

1  The  whole  action  was  so  miraculous,  that  all  men  who 
knew  the  place,  wondered  that  any  sober  men,  with 
what  courage  soever  endued,  would  ever  have  under- 
taken it ;  and  they  could  hardly  persuade  themselves  to 
believe  what  they  had  done,  whilst  the  Spaniards  com- 
forted themselves  with  the  belief  that  they  were  devils 
and  not  men  who  had  destroyed  them  in  such  a  manner. 
So  much  a  strong  resolution  of  bold  and  courageous  men 
can  bring  to  pass,  that  no  resistance  and  advantage  of 
ground  can  disappoint  them.'  The  fact  that  the  victory 
was  due  largely  to  judicious  calculation,  and  was  mate- 
rially helped  by  a  lucky  change  of  wind,  does  not  in 
any  way  detract  from  the  credit  due  to  the  victors  for 
their  mere  courage.  To  be  able  to  estimate  the  chances 
against  him  accurately,  and  to  detect  his  enemy's  weak 
spot,  is  the  best  proof  the  fighting  man  can  give  of  his 
bravery,  for  it  shows  that  no  danger  disturbs  his  think- 
ing faculty.  He  ranks  as  a  captain  by  the  use  he 
makes  of  his  head,  and  in  very  many  cases  that  has 
been  to  show  that  things  formerly  thought  too  dange- 
rous to  be  risked,  are  much  less  perilous  than  they 
look.  The  attack  on  Santa  Cruz  was  not  the  miraculous 
feat  it  seemed  to  people  who  considered  only  the  mate- 
rial means  at  the  disposal  of  the  Spaniards.  On  the 
contrary,  it  was,  as  Blake  proved,  a  very  feasible  piece 
of  work  indeed,  when  properly  tried ;  but  then  a  timid 
commander,  or  one  who  was  bound  by  routine,  would 
have  reasoned  like  the  rest  of  the  world.  He  would 
have  looked  at  the  many  guns  of  the  Spaniards,  and 
their  strong  position,  and  have  left  them  alone.  The 
best  proof  Blake  gave  in  the  course  of  his  life  that  he 
was  a  great  captain  was  his  sagacity  in  judging  that  the 


172  Robert  Blake 

one  half  of  the  Spaniard's  force  would  get  in  the  way  of 
the  other  in  resisting  an  attack.  He  showed  the  strong 
resolution  of  a  bold  and  courageous  man  by  acting  on 
his  own  opinion.  A  very  exacting  critic  might  point 
out  that  the  victory  was  gained  over  an  enemy  far  less 
courageous  and  skilful  at  their  work  than  Blake's  fleet, 
and  that  if  the  sixteen  treasure-ships  had  been  manned 
by  Dutchmen  commanded  by  Tromp,  and  the  forts  had 
been  held  by  the  soldiers  of  Maurice  of  Nassau,  Blake 
might  have  sailed  into  the  Bay,  but  would  never  have 
gone  out.  The  critic  would  probably  be  right,  but  a 
victory  is  not  the  less  a  victory,  nor  the  less  glorious 
and  pleasant  to  remember,  because  it  proves  the  great 
superiority  of  the  victors  in  strength  of  moral  fibre. 
Wellington  manoeuvred  in  one  way  before  the  Mahrattas, 
and  in  another  against  Massena,  and  yet  Assaye  was  a 
glorious  victory.  The  great  leader  by  sea  or  land  is 
just  the  man  who  adapts  his  means  to  his  work,  and 
makes  the  very  utmost  of  his  tools. 

England,  and  Oliver  who  spoke  for  England,  did  not 
measure  their  praise  to  Blake.  In  June  the  Protector 
sent  him  c  a  small  jewel '  of  the  value  of  500Z.,  £  as  a 
testimony  of  our  own  and  the  Parliament's  good  accept- 
ance of  your  carriage  in  this  action,'  and  with  it  a  letter 
lauding  his  wisdom  and  conduct  in  the  pious  style  of  the 
time.  In  the  country  at  large,  then  and  since,  this 
battle  put  Blake  entirely  apart  among  the  officers  of 
the  Commonwealth.  The  others  were  always  men  of  a 
party.  Their  valour  and  skill  were  devoted  to  a  cause 
which  was  never  accepted  by  the  whole  nation.  Even 
the  officers  who  commanded  the  English  contingent  at 
the  battle  of  the  Dunes  were  no  exception,  for  to  say 


Santa  Cruz  de  Tenerife  iji 

nothing  of  the  fact  that  they  met  their  own  countrymen 
in  the  Spanish  ranks,  none  of  them  left  any  great 
personal  reputation.  But  all  Englishmen,  whether 
Royalist,  Eepublican,  or  Cromwellian,  could  be  proud 
of  Santa  Cruz.  Hostility  to  Spain,  both  as  the  most 
bigoted  of  the  Catholic  powers,  and  as  the  nation  which 
kept  guard  over  the  wealth  of  America,  was  an  hereditary 
feeling.  Whoever  struck  at  the  Spaniard  struck  at  the 
enemy  of  England.  When  Blake  gave  him  the  greatest 
blow  he  had  received  since  the  capture  of  Cadiz,  old 
Cavaliers  who  had  charged  under  Rupert  were  as  well 
pleased  as  the  Puritans  who  had  stood  by  the  Admiral 
on  the  walls  of  Taunton.  They  accepted  the  victor  of 
Santa  Cruz  as  the  true  successor  of  Drake  and  of 
Raleigh,  and  were  content  to  forget  in  what  service 
he  had  fought  his  way  to  the  command  of  the 
fleet. 

The  temptation  to  compare  this  brilliant  piece  of 
fighting  with  the  disastrous  affair  of  1797  is  strong,  and 
particularly  for  a  biographer  of  Blake,  since  Nelson  has 
himself  invited  comparison  by  a  somewhat  disparaging 
reference  to  his  predecessor.  In  point  of  fact,  however, 
there  is  very  little  similarity  between  the  two  actions. 
When  Nelson  made  the  desperate  night  attack  which 
failed  so  utterly,  and  which  cost  him  his  right  arm,  he 
had  quite  other  work  to  do  than  Blake.  His  orders 
were  to  capture  the  treasure  which  had  been  landed,  and 
to  do  that  he  must  needs  get  possession  of  the  town. 
Blake's  object  was  the  destruction  of  the  ships  in  the 
harbour,  and  he  had  no  occasion  to  meddle  with  Santa 
Cruz  itself,  beyond  bombarding  the  forts.  It  is  even 
hardly  fair  to  make  a  comparison  between  the  conduct 


174  Robert  Blake 

of  the  leaders,  since  Nelson  was  carrying  out  the  orders 
of  Earl  St.  Vincent,  and  could  only  do  his  best  with 
the  means  given  him.  His  fault,  as  far  as  there  was 
any,  consisted  in  this,  that  he  had  tried  a  work  so 
difficult  as  to  be  nearly  impossible,  with  a  readiness 
which  more  than  bordered  on  temerity.  Given  that  the 
attempt  had  to  be  made,  his  plan  was  probably  as  good 
as  it  could  be.  If  so  many  of  his  boats  had  not  been 
shattered  in  the  surf,  if  one  detachment  of  his  flotilla  had 
not  missed  the  Mole  in  the  dark,  if  he  had  not  been 
disabled  by  a  wound  early  in  the  action,  if  the  Spaniards 
had  been  taken  by  surprise,  and  if  they  had  shown 
much  less  than  their  usual  courage  in  defending  their 
towns,  Santa  Cruz  might  have  been  taken.  The  defect 
of  the  scheme,  the  inevitable  defect,  was  that  it  depended 
for  success  on  so  many '  ifs.'  Blake's  plan  of  battle  needed 
only  good  seamanship  and  good  gunnery  to  make  it 
successful,  and  the  turn  of  the  wind  at  the  end  was 
only  a  little  favour  of  fortune,  grateful  but  not  indis- 
pensable. 

From  Santa  Cruz  Blake  returned  to  Cadiz,  and 
remained  there  till  he  received  leave  to  come  home. 
His  fighting  was  over,  and  his  service  was  drawing  to 
a  close  with  his  life.  Between  the  end  of  April  and 
the  beginning  of  August  he  had  some  accounts  to  settle 
with  the  pirates  of  Sallee,  but  this  was  only  a  continuation 
"of  former  work.  There  was  the  usual  interchange  of 
threats  and  promises.  Little  could  be  done  against  a 
port  too  shallow  to  admit  large  ships,  and  an  enemy 
who  did  not  even  pretend  to  fight,  but  only  lurked 
about  in  search  of  unarmed  merchant  vessels.  The 
pirates  made  the  promises  they  never  failed  to  lavish 


Santa  Cruz  de  Tenerife  175 

when  in  danger  and  break  whenever  they  thought  they 
could  do  it  with  safety. 

During  the  summer  months  Blake's  health  grew 
rapidly  so  bad  that  he  became  incapable  of  doing  the  work 
of  his  squadron.  His  constitution  had  probably  been 
weakened  by  the  wound  he  received  in  the  battle  of  Port- 
land. When  he  landed  at  Walderswick  after  the  battle 
of  June  1653,  he  was  suffering  from  the  gravel.  Since 
then  he  had  been  in  constant  sea  service,  and  when 
he  sailed  to  the  Canaries  he  had  already  been  for  one 
whole  year  on  board,  probably  without  landing  at  all. 
The  inevitable  consequences  were  beginning  to  appear. 
At  that  time,  and  for  generations  after,  scurvy  was  rarely 
absent  from  ships  engaged  in  long  sea  voyages.  The 
treaty  with  Portugal  made  it  possible  for  blockading 
ships  to  obtain  fresh  meat  and  fruit,  but  even  with 
this  occasional  relief  the  health  of  the  fleet  was  bad. 
Confinement,  want  of  exercise,  and  want  of  wholesome 
food,  acting  on  a  constitution  weakened  by  wounds  and 
disease,  did  their  work.  When,  in  August  1657,  Blake 
at  last  received  orders  to  bring  home  the  ships  which 
could  not  be  subjected  to  the  strain  of  another  winter's 
blockade,  he  had  been  attacked  by  some  form  of  scorbu- 
tic disease.  To  him  as  to  Collingwood,  the  permission 
to  revisit  his  native  land  came  too  late.  The  battered 
'  George '  which  carried  his  flag  had  barely  entered  the 
Channel  before  Blake  knew  that  he  should  never  see 
his  house  at  Bridgewater  again.  Nothing  is  known  of 
his  death-bed  beyond  the  fact  that  he  expressed  the 
wish  to  live  long  enough  to  reach  the  shore,  and  have 
some  space  left  him  in  which  to  settle  his  estate.  He  died 
just  two  hours  before  the  '  George,'  with  her  consorts 


176  Robert  Blake 

the  '  Newbury '  and    the  '  Colchester/  cast  anchor  in 
Plymouth  Sound. 

The  Government  he  had  so  well  served  showed  his 
memory  all  due  honour.  '  He  wanted/  in  the  character- 
istic words  of  Clarendon,  '  no  pomp  of  funeral  when  he 
was  dead,  Cromwell  causing  him  to  be  brought  up  by 
land  to  London  in  all  the  state  that  could  be ;  and  to 
encourage  his  officers  to  venture  their  lives,  that  they 
might  be  pompously  buried,  he  was,  with  all  the 
solemnity  possible  and  at  the  charge  of  the  public,  in- 
terr'd  in  Harry  the  Seventh's  Chapel,  among  the  monu- 
ments of  the  Kings.'  It  was  necessary  for  the  Eoyalist 
historian  to  find  some  more  or  less  mean  motive  for 
every  action  of  Cromwell's,  and  to  attribute  whatever 
was  done  in  England  to  him  alone.  In  truth,  however, 
there  was  nothing  exceptional  in  the  funeral  honours 
paid  Blake,  hardly  even  the  place  of  his  sepulchre. 
The  ceremonies  used  were  carefully  copied  from  those 
employed  at  the  funeral  of  Deane  who  was  slain  in 
battle  with  the  Dutch.  The  charge  incurred  was  550Z., 
which  was  very  much  less  than  the  '  publick  '  was  to  be 
called  on  to  pay  for  furnishing  the  apartments  of  Madam 
Carwell,  and  other  persons  who  were  disqualified  not  by 
sex  only,  for  fighting  Van  Tromp  or  sinking  Spanish 
fleets  at  Santa  Cruz.  When  the  bodies  of  the  Common- 
wealth and  Cromwellian  leaders  were  removed  from 
Henry  the  Seventh's  Chapel,  Blake's  corpse  suffered  the 
same  fate  as  those  of  his  old  comrades  in  arms.  This, 
which  is  assuredly  one  of  the  least  dignified  incidents 
of  the  Restoration,  has  been  the  subject  of  a  great  deal 
of  sufficiently  frothy  rhetoric.  In  itself,  the  measure  was 
natural,  and  even  inevitable.     The  restored  monarchy 


Santa  Cruz  de  Tenerife  177 

could  scarcely  be  expected  to  allow  the  remains  of  men 
who  had  fought  to  beat  down  the  crown,  and  to  keep 
it  down,  to  repose  among  the  monuments  of  the  Kings. 
If  it  did  a  not  unnatural  thing  in  an  unnecessarily 
brutal  way,  that,  too,  was  in  keeping  with  the  manners 
of  the  time,  and  a  part  of  the  callous  vulgarity  which 
was  the  note  of  the  Restoration  in  manners,  govern- 
ment, and  literature.  There  seems  to  be  some  doubt 
whether  the  body  of  Blake  was  thrown  into  a  common 
grave  with  those  of  Deane,  Ireton,  and  Cromwell,  or 
given  over  to  his  family  to  be  decently  reinterred  else- 
where. The  subject  is  to  my  mind  a  most  unsavoury 
one,  and  not  worth  investigating  even  if  the  evidence 
were  to  be  got.  It  belongs  for  the  rest  to  the  lives  of 
the  men  who  fled  before  him  when  living,  and  not  to 
the  life  of  the  great  Admiral  and  General  at  sea  who 
wore  his  body  out,  fighting  against  the  enemies  of  the 
human  race  and  of  England. 

Blake  died  in  possession  of  much  such  a  modest 
fortune  as  he  had  inherited  from  his  father.  His  will, 
drawn  up  on  board  the  c  Naseby '  in  St.  Helen's  Road 
in  1656,  contains  a  list  of  small  legacies  amounting  in 
all  to  less  than  SfiOOl.  of  the  money  of  that  time. 
One  sum  of  50Z.  goes  to  '  the  negro  called  Domingo,  my 
servant,  and  is  to  be  disposed  of  by  my  aforesaid  nephew 
Captain  Robert  Blake,  and  Captain  Thomas  Adams,  for 
his  better  education  in  the  knowledge  and  fear  of  God.' 
There  is  also  mention  of  a  manor  at  Crandon-cum- 
Puriton,  of  houses  in  Bridgwater,  and  of  '  all  the 
rest  of  my  goods  and  chattels,'  which  does  not  probably 
stand  for  any  considerable  amount.  Two  of  the  legacies, 
of  100Z.  each,  are  to  the  poor  of  his  native  town  of 

N 


178  Robert  Blake 

Bridgewater,  and  of  his  old  government  of  Taunton. 
The  gold  chain  given  to  him,  as  well  as  to  Monk  and 
Penn,  at  the  end  of  the  Dutch  war,  is  left  to  his  nephew, 
Captain  Robert  Blake.  His  services  to  the  State  were 
not  productive  of  wealth  to  the  Admiral.  It  does  not 
appear  that  he  received  any  prize-money  for  the  Plate 
ships  taken  in  1656,  though  at  a  later  period  his  rank 
would  have  entitled  him  to  a  handsome  sum.  He  was 
not  one  of  those  Parliamentary  officers  who  were  en- 
riched by  grants  of  confiscated  land.  The  500L  given 
him  for  the  defence  of  Taunton,  and  the  1000L  voted 
after  his  return  from  the  first  cruise  into  the  Medi- 
terranean, represent  all  he  gained  over  and  above  his 
c  pay  and  provend.'*  Like  so  many  fighting  men  of  that 
time,  he  had  to  complain  with  Dalgetty  of  the  extreme 
irregularity  of  his  paymasters.  It  is  even  stated  by  the 
editor  of  the  Calendar  of  State  Papers  for  1657-58,  that 
he  was  owed  the  sum  of  3,815?.  16s.  for  arrears  of  salary 
at  the  date  of  his  death.  When  it  is  remembered  that 
this  sum  is  equivalent  to  about  15,000?.  of  our  money, 
and  represented  several  years'  pay,  it  seems  unlikely 
that  the  State  was  so  heavily  in  his  debt.  The  wording 
of  the  order  for  the  payment  of  the  sum  on  July  21, 1657, 
is  consistent  with  the  supposition  that  it  was  meant  for 
the  general  service  of  his  squadron,  which  was  then 
about  to  come  home,  and  must  be  paid  off.  Even,  how- 
ever, if  he  was  punctually  paid  his  salary,  he  gained 
little  else  in  the  way  of  worldly  goods  during  the  Civil 
War.  Blake  was  not  one  of  those  sequestrators  and 
committee  men  who  built  themselves  up  fortunes  out  of 
the  plunder  of  the  Royalists. 


179 


CHAPTER  XII. 

CONCLUSION. 

In  reporting  the  departure  of  the  l  George,'  c  Newbury,' 
and  '  Colchester '  from  Plymouth  with  the  Admiral's 
body,  Captain  Henry  Hatsell  observes,  '  I  suppose  he 
will  have  a  very  honourable  interment,  befitting  a  person 
of  his  worth,  who  indeed,  setting  some  human  frailties 
aside  (from  which  the  best  of  men  are  not  free)  may  be 
ranked  with  most  that  have  gone  before  him  in  our  age.' 
If  the  captain  had  only  recorded  some  of  these  same 
human  frailties,  we  might  have  forgiven  him  for  his 
platitude.  If  he  had,  it  would  have  been  easier  to  know 
what  sort  of  man  Robert  Blake  was.  A  series  of  actions 
do  not  make  a  biography,  however  long  and  brilliant  it 
may  be.  Mr.  Carlyle  gave  up  his  intention  of  writing 
a  life  of  Montrose,  because  it  was  impossible  to  discover 
what  the  Royalist  hero  '  was  really  like.'  The  instinct 
of  the  great  interpreter  of  character  undoubtedly  led 
him  right,  and  yet,  in  mere  bulk,  the  materials  for  the 
life  of  Montrose  are  abundant.  Bulk  is,  however,  the 
least  merit  of  historical  evidence.  Ten  lines  of  one  of 
Cromwell's  letters,  or  of  Nelson's,  are  worth  volumes 
of  State  papers  and  official  reports,  as  helps  towards 
realising  the  nature  of  the  man.     Contemporaries  are 

N  2 


180  Robert  Blake 

good  witnesses  when  they  have  a  share  of  Claren- 
don's faculty  of  character-drawing,  or  Boswell's  power 
of  making  a  man  draw  himself.  When  they  have 
not — and  it  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  how  often  that 
is  the  case — they  are  witnesses  for  very  little,  barely 
even  for  themselves.  When  no  Clarendon  or  Bos  well 
has  been  standing  by,  a  man  must  paint  himself,  but 
the  actors  of  conspicuous  parts  in  history  who  could 
stamp  their  individuality  on  their  every  word  and  action, 
are  nearly  as  rare  as  the  great  creative  geniuses  of 
literature. 

Blake  was  a  far  less  prominent  figure  in  the  great 
civil  war  than  Montrose,  and  proportionately  less  is 
known  about  him.  We  have  Captain  Hatsell's  word 
for  it  that  he  was  not  one  of  those  perfect  men  whom 
Mr.  Carlyle  found  such  a  limited,  uninteresting  sort, 
but  we  have  the  general  statement,  and  nothing  more. 
In  Ludlow's  memoirs  there  is  a  mention  of  him  which 
promises  well,  and  then  the  same  barrenness  of  detail. 
'  When  I  came  to  the  House  of  Commons,  I  met  Col. 
Rob.  Blake,  attending  to  be  admitted,  being  chosen 
for  Taunton  ;  where  having  taken  the  usual  oaths,  we 
went  into  the  House  together,  which  I  chose  to  do, 
assuring  myself,  he  having  been  faithful  and  active 
in  the  publick  service  abroad,  that  we  should  be  as 
unanimous  in  the  carrying  it  on  within  those  doors.' 
After  this  generality  there  is  only  one  casual  mention 
of  his  name.  Faithful  and  active,  stout  and  valiant,  he 
was  by  the  consent  of  all  men,  but  a  bundle  of  adjec- 
tives do  not  make  an  individuality. 

Of  the  few  stories  told  about  him,  not  one  can  be 
shown    to    rest    on    thoroughly    satisfactory    evidence. 


Conclusion  181 

His  patronising  goodnature  to  the  Royalist  trumpeter 
at  Taunton  is  reported  in  a  doggrel  broadside.  His 
rather  contemptuous  permission  to  the  French  captain 
in  the  Straits  to  go  back  to  his  ship  and  fight  her  if  he 
could,  and  his  vehement  assertion  of  the  rights  of 
Englishmen  at  Malaga,  are  supported  only  by  the 
authority  of  Whitelocke  and  Burnet.  There  is  nothing 
incredible  in  any  of  the  three.  Even  the  release  of  the 
French  captain  may  well  be  true,  since,  if  the  man's 
ship's  company  were  resolved  to  fight,  they  could  do  it 
without  him.  Neither  Blake's  orders  nor  the  character 
universally  ascribed  to  him  are  consistent  with  the 
supposition  that  he  would  have  committed  the  mean 
trick  of  getting  the  Frenchman  on  board  on  false 
pretences,  and  then  attacking  his  ship  without  warning. 
That  would  have  been  much  too  like  the  heroic  feat  of 
the  late  Admiral  Courbet  at  Foochow.  A  more  famous 
and  honourable  story  than  any  of  the  three  can  be 
proved  to  be  absolutely  false.  It  has  been  said  that 
during  the  attack  on  Santa  Cruz,  Captain  Benjamin 
Blake,  a  younger  brother  of  the  Admiral's,  was  guilty 
of  gross  misconduct.  His  failure  was  known  to  his 
brother  and  commander.  When  the  action  was  over, 
Blake  insisted  on  bringing  him  to  a  court  martial,  and 
exerted  his  authority  to  overcome  the  reluctance  of  his 
captains  to  try  the  brother  of  their  Admiral.  When  the 
court  brought  in  a  very  light  sentence,  Blake  dismissed 
his  offending  brother  from  the  squadron.  It  may  be  an 
open  question  whether  it  is  more  honourable  for  a  man 
to  behave  with  such  stern  impartiality  as  this,  or  never 
to  have  had  a  brother  who  showed  the  white  feather, 
but  Blake  was  never  subjected  to  the  trial.     Captain 


1 82  Robert  Blake 

Benjamin  was  not  in  the  fleet  which  attacked  Santa 
Cruz.  He  did  show  a  very  mutinous  disposition  when 
acting  as  second  in  command  under  Goodson  in  the 
West  Indies,  and  some  vague  reminiscence  of  this  is 
probably  the  origin  of  the  story,  but  in  its  popular 
form  it  is  certainly  untrue.  However  suspicious  the 
best  authenticated  of  these  tales  may  be,  they  are,  how- 
ever, not  quite  without  value  as  evidence  of  the  charac- 
ter of  Blake.  We  lend  only  to  the  rich,  according  to  the 
well-known  French  proverb,  and  such  anecdotes  would 
hardly  have  been  invented  except  about  a  leader  who 
was  both  strictly  honourable  and  magnanimously  brave. 
The  very  paucity  of  stories  about  Blake  has  a 
certain  negative  value  as  evidence.  It  is  at  least  some 
proof  of  what  he  was  not.  It  may  be  safely  asserted 
that  no  man  could  have  played  so  active  a  part  as  he 
did  in  the  West,  within  earshot  of  Clarendon,  or  could 
have  sat  in  Parliament  during  the  stormy  period  of  the 
.second  civil  war,  by  the  side  of  Sir  William  Waller  and 
Edtnund  Ludlow,  and  yet  have  never  said  or  done  any- 
thing which  any  of  the  three  thought  worth  recording, 
if  he  had  been  either  an  active  politician  or  a  man  of 
pronounced  religious  opinions.  Only  an  exceedingly 
acute  attack  of  what  Macaulay  called  the  lues  Boswel- 
liana  (an  inaccurate  name  for  a  not  uncommon  disease) 
could  mislead  any  biographer  into  making  of  Blake  a 
political  leader  of  any  mark.  On  the  contrary,  he 
was,  throughout  his  whole  Parliamentary  career,  a 
silent  and  voting  member.  It  was  not  until  the  last 
century  had  begun,  that  anything  was  heard  of  his 
political  opinions.  In  his  own  time  it  was  written  that 
/  '  as  he  lived,  so  he  continued  to  the  death,  faithful.'// 


Conclusion  183 

He  was  true  to  his  party,  and  if  his  life  has  any  political 
significance  at  all,  it  is  because  he  was  a  very  good 
specimen  of  those  Englishmen  who  took  up  arms 
against  the  King,  from  a  belief  that  he  was  not  main- 
taining but  stretching  the  royal  power,  who  stood  by 
the  Independents  from  a  fear  that  the  Presbyterians 
would  make  a  ruinous  compromise,  and  who  obeyed 
Cromwell  on  the  ground  that  he  was  a  truer  represen- 
tative of  their  cause  than  the  little  knot  of  pedantic 
Republicans  who  controlled  the  Rump.  The  mere  fact 
that  he  was  not  one  of  the  King's  judges,  and  yet  took 
service  in  the  fleet  under  a  commission  from  the 
Keepers  of  the  Liberties  of  England,  proves  conclusively 
that  he  was  not  then  considered  as  a  man  of  much 
mark,  and  that  he  was  known  not  to  be  opposed  to  the 
measure.  The  application  of  the  same  negative  test  to 
his  religious  opinions  shows  that  he  was  one  of  the 
party  with  whom  puritanism  was  a  matter  of  morals  and 
conduct,  rather  than  of  dogma.  We  know  the  religious 
opinions  of  Massey  and  Skippon,  and  of  many  scores  of 
obscure  men  who  rose  to  the  surface  for  a  moment 
during  that  time  of  conflict.  Of  Blake  it  is  only 
known  that  he  cannot  have  belonged  to  any  of  the 
noisier  sects  of  the  time,  and  that  he  was  so  far  an 
Independent  as  to  sit  on  Cromwell's  committee  for 
settling  the  religious  organisation  of  the  country.  His 
piety  will  be  doubted  only  by  those  who  hold  the  old 
doctrine  that  all  the  Puritans  were  hypocrites,  who  cut 
their  hair  short  and  snuffled  through  their  noses.  Now 
and  again  it  is  advanced  even  yet  by  writers  officially 
described  as  dramatists.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  with  whom 
they  are  said  to  be  under  the  impression  that  they 


1 84  Robert  Blake 

agree,  thought  otherwise.  In  <  Woodstock,'  one  of  the 
best  of  the  second  rank  of  his  stories,  he  has  not  judged 
the  King's  enemies  with  undue  favour,  but  he  was 
incapable  of  the  stupidity  of  thinking  that  the  men 
who 

Could  by  industrious  valour  climb 
To  ruin  the  great  work  of  time, 

And  cast  the  kingdoms  old 
Into  another  mould, 

were  mere  liars  and  mountebanks.  '  It '  (the  Puritan) 
c  was,  however,  a  cast  of  mind  that  formed  men  for  great 
and  manly  actions,  as  it  adopted  principles,  and  that  of 
an  unselfish  character,  for  the  ruling  motive,  instead  of 
the  gratification  of  passion.'  Whatever  the  religious 
opinions  of  Blake  may  have  been,  they  certainly  did  not 
unfit  him  for  great  and  manly  actions. 

Tradition  of  a  more  or  less  dubious  character  has 
preserved  a  few  stories  of  the  Admiral's  personal  appear- 
ance and  habits.  It  is  known  on  the  good  authority  of 
Wood,  that  he  was  short  and  thickset, — the  build  of  a 
born  sailor — and  much  inferior  witnesses  have  added 
that  he  was  of  a  fair  complexion  and  broadfaced.  The 
account  of  his  habits  given  in  the  '  History  and  Life,'  is 
to  be  accepted  with  great  caution,  but  this  much  is  to 
be  said  for  it,  that  it  is  not  inconsistent  with  what  is 
known  on  undoubted  authority.  The  writer,  who  pro- 
fesses to  repeat  the  report  of  one  who  had  known  the 
Admiral,  describes  him  as  possessing  a  character  of  the 
kind  called  solid.  He  was  a  man  of  few  words  and 
solitary  habits.  '  His  look  inclined  rather  to  the  stern 
than  to  the  soft,  and  he  never  fell  into  any  kind  of 
drollery,  yet   would  often  be  pleasant,  and  generally 


Conclusion  185 

affected  to  express  his  pleasantry  in  some  Latin  verse 
or  saying,  of  which  he  had  always  the  most  proper  ad 
■unguem,  being  an  excellent  scholar  as  well  as  soldier.' 
This,  if  it  is  not  an  amplification,  is  a  friendly  version  of 
the  '  moroseness  and  fondness  for  the  occasional  society 
of  good  fellows  '  attributed  to  him  by  Clarendon.  It 
would  have  been  strange  if  a  man  who  had  been  nine 
years  at  Oxford  could  not  quote  Latin  in  an  age  when  it 
was  in  very  familiar  use.  The  rather  feeble  garrulity  of 
the  account  is  in  favour  of  the  honesty  of  the  author, 
in  saying  that  he  was  informed  by  one  Thomas  Bear, 
who  had  been  the  Admiral's  servant.  There  is  no  such 
person  mentioned  in  the  will,  but  an  old  servant  would 
have  tattled  along  very  much  in  this  fashion  : — '  General 
Blake  pray'd  himself  aboard  his  ship,  with  such  of  his 
men  as  could  be  admitted  to  that  duty  with  him,  and 
the  last  thing  he  did  after  he  had  given  his  commands 
and  word  to  his  men  in  order  to  retire  to  his  bed,  was  to 
pray  with  the  aforementioned  Mr.  Bear.  When  that  was 
over  he  was  wont  to  say,  "  Thomas,  bring  me  the  pretty 
cup  of  sack,"  which  he  did,  with  a  crust  of  bread  ;  he 
would  then  sit  down,  and  give  Thomas  liberty  to  do  the 
same,  and  inquire  what  news  he  had  of  his  Bridge  water 
men  that  day,  and  talk  of  the  people  and  affairs  of  the 
place.'  The  valet  is  notoriously  a  poor  judge  of  a  hero, 
but  the  real  or  imaginary  Mr.  Thomas  Bear  had  nothing 
belittling  to  tell  of  Blake.  Beyond  the  pretty  cup  of 
sack,  always  taken  c  with  exemplary  moderation,'  and 
the  interest  taken  in  his  townsmen,  there  is  little  in  Mr. 
Bear's  reminiscences  which  is  not  of  the  usual  general 
character.  That  Blake  was  not  given  to  the  naval 
cursing  and  swearing  common  in  the  days  of  Commo- 


1 86  Robert  Blake 

dore  Trunnion  and  later,  may  easily  be  believed  about 
the  Puritan.  That  he  carried  on  his  command  without 
the  bullying  of  Smollett's  time  and  later,  is  not  less 
credible  of  the  admiral  of  a  revolutionary  government 
which  had  to  employ  good  treatment  and  improved  pay 
to  counteract  old  habits  of  loyalty  to  an  exiled  royal 
race. 

On  the  whole,  the  Blake  partially  sketched  by  the 
dubious  Mr.  Thomas  Bear  has  a  striking  air  of  veri- 
similitude. It  is  the  portrait,  as  far  as  it  goes,  of  a 
sober,  solid,  and  laborious  Englishman  of  the  provincial 
middle  class,  patriotic  and  pious,  with  a  wholesome 
indifference  to  theories,  and  with  a  practical  faculty  for 
managing  business. 

It  was  only  as  a  fighting  man  that  Blake  can  be  said 
to  have  approached  greatness  in  any  rational  sense  of 
the  word.  As  an  admiral  he  gained  a  position  which 
continued  to  be  unrivalled  until  more  than  a  century 
after  his  death.  Whether  such  a  life  is  as  interesting  as 
it  is  theoretically  supposed  to  be,  is  perhaps  doubtful. 
Certainly  there  is  no  class  of  men  who  play  a  smaller 
part  in  biography  than  admirals.  Their  greatness  is 
taken  for  granted.  Nelson  is  indeed  an  exception,  but 
then  he  was  an  exception  in  so  many  respects,  not  the 
least  important  of  them  being  that  he  found  Southey 
for  a  biographer.  The  interest  of  his  life,  too,  is  largely 
independent  of  his  great  feats  in  battle.  Das  ewig 
Weibliche  plays  a  very  large  part  in  his  doings,  and 
his  famous  saying,  '  if  there  were  more  Emmas  there 
would  be  more  Nelsons '  is  true  in  a  sense  he  never 
meant  the  words  to  bear.     Fortunately  or  not,  no  other 


Conclusion  187 

admiral  has  possessed  in  an  equally  eminent  degree  that 
power  of  going  to  the  devil  for  a  woman  which  Miss 
Crawley  admired  so  much  in  c  the  shaker  of  the  Baltic 
and  the  Nile/  With  the  exception  of  this  one,  who  will 
always  be  attractive  to  all  who  care  for  the  study  of 
character,  by  virtue  of  his  colossal  vanity,  his  strange 
mixture  of  heroism  and  childishness,  his  erratic  gene- 
rosity, and  his  furious  passions,  the  admirals  have, 
like  other  seamen,  formed  a  nation  by  themselves. 
Generals  may  be,  and  often  have  been,  eminent  as 
statesmen  and  conspicuous  in  society.  An  admiral 
can  hardly  be.  He  must  live  at  a  distance  from  capital, 
and  court,  and  politics.  At  best  he  sees  them  only  at 
intervals,  and  his  work  is  done  under  conditions  which 
few  understand.  Neither  are  these  conditions  such  as 
lead  to  much  variety  of  character.  The  seaman  was 
drawn  once  and  for  all  by  Clarendon.  Even  the  genius 
of  Southey,  and  the  apparent  interest  of  his  subject,  has 
not  saved  his  lives  of  Frobisher,  Cavendish,  Drake,  and 
Hawkins,  admirably  written  as  they  are,  and  full  of 
stirring  tales  of  the  sea,  from  falling  into  comparative 
obscurity.  To  read  these  things  with  pleasure  one 
must  possess  a  little  of  the  happy  faculty  of  Tartarin. 
The  hero  of  Tarascon  could,  as  everybody  knows,  so  lose 
himself  in  reading  of  hunting  and  travel,  that  he  forgot 
he  was  sitting  in  his  summer  house,  and  would  rush  to 
his  stand  of  tomahawks  and  slay  imaginary  redskins. 
Tartarin  was  not  so  absurd  as  his  malicious  biographer 
has  been  pleased  to  describe  him.  Without  a  consider- 
able share  of  his  boyish  love  of  reading  about  good 
fights,  nobody  can  enjoy  the  naval  side  of  the  history  of 


1 88  Robert  Blake 

England,  which  after  all  is  not  without  its  importance  as 
a  part  of  our  national  activity. 

When  Campbell  linked  the  liame  of  Blake  with 
Nelson's,  he  did  more  than  consult  the  exigencies  of  his 
metre.  The  two  are  very  fit  to  be  named  together,  for 
as  the  one  did  the  very  utmost  that  could  be  done  with 
the  old  sailing  fleet,  and  can  never  have  a  rival,  the 
other  was  the  first  of  the  modern  admirals.  The  Eliza- 
bethan seamen  had  been  brilliant  privateers,  discoverers, 
and  adventurers,  but  they  were  rather  armed  traders 
who  were  driven  to  fight,  than  naval  officers.  Blake 
was  the  servant  of  the  State  as  much  as  Anson  or 
Rodney.  He  was  the  first  man  to  command  the 
English  fleet  when  it  became  a  great  and  ubiquitous 
force.  The  distinction  he  gained  in  his  office,  and  the 
vital  service  he  rendered  his  country,  were  not  mainly 
due  to  any  intellectual  qualities.  As  a  pure  strategist 
he  cannot  be  said  to  have  shown  any  great  originality. 
Tromp  was  certainly,  and  his  own  subordinate  Lawson 
was  probably,  his  superior  in  this  respect.  Intrepidity 
of  character  is  much  more  his  note  than  skill.  Claren- 
don's masterly  portrait  has  been  occasionally  cavilled  at, 
but,  as  is  usually  the  case  with  this  master-draftsman's 
handiwork,  it  is  essentially  true.  '  He  was  the  first  man 
that  declined  the  old  track,  and  made  it  manifest  that 
the  science  might  be  attained  in  less  time  than  it  was 
imagined  ;  and  despised  those  rules  which  had  been  long 
in  practice,  to  keep  his  ship  and  his  men  out  of  danger, 
which  had  been  held  in  former  times  a  point  of  great 
ability  and  circumspection,  as  if  the  principal  art  requi- 
site in  the  captain  of  a  ship  had  been  to  be  sure  to  come 


Conclusion  i  89 

home  safe  again.  He  was  the  first  man  who  brought 
the  ships  to  contemn  castles  on  shore,  which  had 
been  thought  ever  very  formidable,  and  were  discovered 
by  him  to  make  a  noise  only,  and  to  fright  those  who 
could  rarely  be  hurt  by  them.  He  was  the  first  that 
infused  that  proportion  of  courage  into  the  seamen,  by 
making  them  see  by  experience  what  mighty  things 
they  could  do  if  they  were  resolved,  and  taught  them 
to  fight  in  fire  as  well  as  upon  water,  and  though  he  hath 
been  very  well  imitated  and  followed,  he  was  the  first 
that  gave  the  example  of  that  kind  of  naval  courage 
and  bold  and  resolute  achievements.' 

It  is  easy  enough  to  pick  holes  in  this  sketch,  but 
whoever  thinks  he  can  better  Clarendon  will  generally 
find  that  he  is  repeating  the  same  judgment  in  tamer 
words.  When  Blake  took  the  advice  of  his  council  of 
officers,  and  fought  off  Dungeness  ;  when  he  accepted 
battle  with  Tromp  in  the  Channel,  though  he  had  only 
twelve  ships  by  him,  and  so  checked  the  progress  of  the 
Dutch  fleet  until  his  own  supports  could  come  up  ;  when 
he  attacked  Porto  Farina  without  orders,  and  when  he 
sailed  into  Santa  Cruz,  what  he  showed  was  above  all 
things  intrepidity.  There  was  calculation  and  good 
management,  but  they  were  less  conspicuous  than  un- 
daunted courage.  If  he  added  nothing  to  the  naval 
science  of  his  age,  he  showed  the  utmost  that  could  be 
done,  with  the  navy  as  it  was,  by  men  who  were 
prepared  to  dare  all. 

To  speak  of  him  as  a  great  man,  as  one  who  stood 
over  against  Oliver  Cromwell,  would  be  mere  bio- 
grapher's midsummer  madness.     At  the  best  he  came 


190  Robert  Blake 

as  near  as  any  man  of  his  time  to  being  as  tall  as  the 
hilt  of  the  Protector's  sword.  But  he  left  a  character 
without  a  stain ;  he  rendered  great  services  to  England  ; 
he  set  an  example  which  hath  been  very  well  imitated 
and  followed,  and  that  is  more  than  enough  to  entitle 
him  to  the  name  of  Worthy. 


INDEX. 


Akson,  captain  of  *  Bonaven- 

ture,'  100,  101 
Algiers,  pirate  power  of,  121 
Allen,  captain  at  sea  for  King, 

49 
Ascue,  Admiral,  at  Scilly  Isles, 

67  ;    opposed  to  Tromp,  85, 

86 


Badajos,  Marquis  of,  160  et 
seq.     See  Plate  ships 

Batten,  captain  of  'Garland,' 
100,  101 

Bawdon,  Parliamentary  officer, 
story  of,  31 

Berkeley,  Sir  John,  Eoyalist 
officer,  21 ;  besieges  Taunton, 
27 

Blake,  Benjamin,  apocryphal 
story  of,  181 

Blake,  Captain  Samuel,  brother 
of  Robert,  killed,  *  had  no 
business  there,'  15 

Blake,  family  of,  2,  3 

Blake,  Humphrey,  father  of 
Admiral,  2  ;  his  fortune,  ib. 

Blake,  Robert,  mentioned  by 
Nelson,  1  ;  by  birth  a  gentle- 
man, 2  ;  birth,  3 ;  Anthony 
Wood's  account  of,  ib. ;  Clar- 
endon's account  of,   4 ;    at 


BLAKE 

Wadham  College,  5,  6;  in- 
herits estate,  6 ;  Puritan 
opinions,  7  :  in  Short  Parlia- 
ment as  member  for  Bridge- 
water,  ib. ;  in  Civil  War,  11  ; 
in  Popham's  regiment,  12 ; 
in  garrison  of  Bristol,  14  ; 
story  of  his  brother  Samuel, 
15 ;  commands  Prior's  Hill 
Fort,  16;  defends  same,  17, 
18  ;  refuses  to  surrender,  20; 
at  Lyme,  20-23;  defends 
Taunton,  25-33  ;  takes  Dun- 
ster  Castle,  34  ;  rewarded  by 
Parliament,  ib. ;  member  for 
Taunton,  ib. ;  admiral  and 
general  at  sea,  35 ;  preparing 
squadron,  51 ;  blockades  Kin- 
sale,  52;  offered  command 
in  Ireland  by  Cromwell,  53  ; 
is  to  sail  for  Portugal,  ib. ; 
sails,  54 ;  his  orders,  lb. ;  off 
Lisbon,  56 ;  takes  English 
ships  in  Portuguese  pay,  59  ; 
captures  Brazil  fleet,  60 ;  and 
Rupert's  ships,  61  ;  action 
with  French  ships,  63  ; 
home,  64 ;  awarded  1,000Z. 
and  thanked  by  Parliament, 
65 ;  in  command  of  Irish 
seas,  65 ;  at  Scilly  Isles,  66 ; 
appointed  to  land  command 


192 


Robert  Blake 


BLAKE 

in  West,  68 ;  in  Downs,  69  ; 
helps  to  take  Jersey,  70,  71  ; 
at  Whitehall,  72 ;  his  sea- 
manship, 73 ;  fight  with 
Tromp  off  Dover,  80;  sails 
against  Dutch  herring  fleet, 
85  j  scatters  Vendome's 
ships,  88 ;  wins  battle  off 
Kentish  Knock,  95  et  seq.; 
battle  off  Dungeness,  99  et 
seq. ;  at  battle  of  Portland, 
103 ;  wounded,  104 ;  ill  on 
shore,  106  ;  his  political  con- 
duct, 109  et  seq. ;  at  sea 
again,  112  ;  again  ill,  113 ; 
in  Channel,  115 ;  sails  for 
Mediterranean,  117;  on  coast 
of  Italy,  118  ;  attacks  Tunis, 
125  ;  at  Malaga,  131 ;  block- 
ading Cadiz,  137  ;  back  in 
England,  143 ;  sails  south 
with  Montague,  144  ;  second 
blockade  of  Cadiz,  151 ;  bis 
attack  on  Santa  Cruz,  165- 
172  ;  praised  for,  172,  173  ; 
returns  to  Cadiz,  174;  ill- 
ness and  return  home,  175  ; 
death,  ib. ;  funeral,  176  ;  his 
body  disinterred  after  Re- 
storation, 177  ;  his  will,  177- 
178;  his  character  and  ser- 
vice to  navy,  179-190 

Blockades,  tedium  of,  141 

Bristol,  siege  of,  16-20 


HORNER 

orders  from,  139  ;  discourses 
probabilities  as  to  Cadiz  and 
Gibraltar,  157 


Deane,  Colonel,  admiral  and 
general  at  sea,  35,  50-52, 
102,  112,113 

De  Ruyter,  Dutch  admiral, 
succeeds  Tromp  in  command, 
88 

De  Witt,  Dutch  admiral,  suc- 
ceeds Tromp  in  command, 
88,  95 

Diagues,  Don  Diego,  governor 
of  Santa  Cruz,  167 

Dungeness,  battle  off,  99  et 
seq. 

Fairfax,  Sir  Thomas,  raises 
siege  of  Taunton,  33 


Gable,  battle  of,  112 
Galleys  as  fighting  ships,  155 
Gibraltar,  proposal  to  seize,  157 
Goring,  Royalist  general,  sur- 
renders Portsmouth,  13 
Green vil,  Sir  Bevil,  leader  of 
the  Royalists  in  West,  ]  3  ; 
killed  at  Lansdown,  20 
Greenvil,  Sir  John,  governor  of 

Scilly  Isles  for  King,  66 
Greenvil,  Sir  Richard,  besieges 
Taunton,  27 


Cadiz,  blockade  of,  137 ;  second 
blockade  of,  153 ;  proposal 
to  seize,  157 

Carteret,  Sir  George,  governor 
of  Jersey  for  King,  69  ;  sur- 
renders, 71 

Ceely,  Colonel,  governor  of 
Lyme,  21 

>omwell,01iver,  Blake  younger 
than,  3 ;  expels  Rump,  108 


Hatsell,  Captain,  quoted,  1 79 

Hertford,  Marquis  of,  at  Wells, 
12  ;  at  Sherborne  and  M  in- 
head,  13     21 

Holland,  causes  of  war  with, 
75  ;  naval  power  of,  82-13 

Hopton,  Sir  Ralph,  Royalist 
officer,  13,  20 

Horner,  Sir  John  Parliamen- 
tary colonel,  12 


Index 


193 


John  op  Bkaganza,  king  of 
Portugal,  56  et  seq. 


Kentish    Knock,    sea  -  fight 

near,  93  et  seq. 
Knoll  Hill,   near  Bridgwater, 

home  of  Blake,  3 


Lawson,  John,  admiral,  105, 

113 
Lyme,  siege  of,  21-23 


Malaga,  Blake  at,  131-132 

Maurice,  Prince,  commands  for 
King  in  West,  21 

Meadows,  Mr.  See  Portugal, 
negotiations 

Monk,  George,  joined  in  com- 
mand with  Blake,  102,  104, 
112,  113 

Montague,  after  Earl  of  Sand- 
wich, joined  in  command 
with  Blake,  144,  160,  162, 
163 


Navy,  state  of,  in  Blake's  time, 
33-47 ;  strength  as  compared 
to  Dutch,  84 

Nelson,  Lord,  mentions  Blake 
in  a  letter  to  Earl  St.  Vin- 
cent, 1 


Penn,  Sir  William,  admiral, 
diaries  of,  52,  95,  105,  117 

Philip  IV.,  King  of  Spain, 
138 

Plate  ships,  133  et  seq. ;  cap- 
ture of,  161.     See  Stayner 

Popham,  Colonel,  admiral  and 
general  at  sea,  35-50 

Popham,  Colonel  Alexander- 
Parliamentary  officer,  12 


Portland,  battle  of,  103  et  seq. 
Porto  Farina  (Tunis),  action  at, 

125  et  seq. 
Portugal,    negotiations     with, 

147  et  seq. 
Pressgang,  102,  145,  146 
Protector.     See  Cromwell 


Rupeet,  Prince,  commands 
squadron  for  King,  48-50  ; 
at  Kinsale,  50,  52 ;  at  Lis- 
bon, 53,  55,  57-60 ;  in  Medi- 
terranean, 61 ;  end  of  his 
cruise,  62 

Ruthven,  Parliamentary  gene- 
ral, afterwards  Royalist,  13 


Sainte  Beuve,  his  essay  on 
D'Aubigne,  9 

Salute,  question  of,  77 

Santa  Cruz,  attack  on,  165  et 
seq. ;  Nelson's  attack  on,  173 

Ships  : — Amity,  125  ;  Andrew, 
94,  95,  125  ;  Antelope,  148  ; 
Bonaventure,  100,  101  ; 
Brederode,  79,  101 ;  Bridge- 
water,  125,  160  ;  Colchester, 
179  ;  Concord,  65  ;  Constant 
Warwick,  65,  66  ;  Convert, 
65  ;  Convertine,  48,  65  ;  Fel- 
lowship, 65  ;  Foresight,  125  ; 
Fox,  65-66;  Garland,  100, 
101 ;  George,  flagship,  125, 
175  ;  Guinea,  49,  53 ;  Hector, 
65-66 ;  Hind,  65  ;  Hoy,  65  ; 
James,  flagship,  78,  79,  93  ; 
Little  Parliament,  65 ;  Maria, 
125  ;  Mayflower,  65,  66  ;  Mer- 
lin, 125  ;  Mermaid,  125  ; 
Newbury,  179 ;  Newcastle, 
125;  Nonsuch,  53;  Pearl, 
125;  Phoenix,  65,  151;  Ply- 
mouth, 125, 161 ;  Portsmouth 
65 ;  Princess,  125 ;  Provi- 
dence, 65;    Resolution,  93; 


194 


Robert  Blake 


WYNDHAM 


Roebuck,  49  ;  Taunton,  125  ; 
Tenth  Whelp,  65,  66 ;  The- 
seus, 66 ;  Triumph,  flagship, 
104  ;  Truelove,  65  ;  Sapphire, 
152,  156, 160;  Sovereign,  94, 
100;  Speaker,  152,  156, 160  ; 
Success,  125  ;  Swallow,  48  ; 
Swiftsure,  65,  66  ;  Unicorn, 
125;  Victory,  flagship,  69, 
100;  Worcester,  125 

Slanning,  Sir  Nicholas,  Royal- 
ist, 13  ;  killed  at  Bristol,  20 

Spain,  attack  on,  116 

Stamford,  Earl  of,  Parliamen- 
tary general,  13 

Stawell,  Sir  John,  Royalist  offi- 
cer, 14 

Stayner,  Sir  Richard,  takes 
Plate  ships,  160-162, 168, 169 


Tactics,  naval,  in  seventeenth 
century,  91,  92 

Taunton,  capture  of,  24  ;  siege 
of,  25-33 

Trevanion,  Sir  John,  Royalist, 
13  ;  killed  at  Bristol,  20 

Tromp,  Dutch  admiral,  at  Scilly 
Isles,  61 ;  in  Straits,  78  ;  at- 
tacks Blake  off  Dover,  79  ; 
threatens  Ascue,  86 ;  fleet 
scattered  by  storm,  87  ;  re- 


signs command,  ib. ;  restored 
to  command,  98 
Tunis,  pirate  power  of,  119  et 
seq. 


Vandeuske,  Colonel,  Parlia- 
mentary officer,  relieves 
Taunton,  27 

Venables,  Colonel,  117 


Waller,  Sir  E.,  quoted,  163 
Warwick,  Earl  of,  Parliamen- 
tary admiral,  23 
Weir,  Colonel,  ■  Diurnal  of,'  22  ; 

wounded,  23 
Welden,Colonel,  Parliamentary 
officer,  relieves  Taunton,  30- 
31 
West,  campaigns  in,  12-13 
Whistler,  Dr.  Daniel,  107 
Worcester,  battle  of,  69 
Worcester,  Earl  of,  richest  noble 
inEnglandtemp.  Charles  I.,  3 
Wounded,    bad    state    of,    at 

Portsmouth,  107 
Wyndham,  a  Royalist  member 
for  Bridgewater  in  Long 
Parliament,  8  ;  besieges 
Taunton,  26 ;  driven  away, 
27 


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tary, naval,  literary,  scientific,  legal,  ecclesiastical,  social,  etc.  Each 
biography  has  been  intrusted  to  a  writer  specially  acquainted  with  the 
historical  period  in  which  his  hero  lived,  and  in  special  sympathy,  as  it 
were,  with  his  subject. 


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New  revised  edition  of  Bancroft's  History  of  the  United  States. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES,  from  the  Discovery 
of  the  Continent  to  the  Establishment  of  the  Constitution  in  1*789. 
By  George  Bancroft.  Complete  in  6  vols.,  8vo,  printed  from  new 
type,  and  bound  in  cloth,  uncut,  with  gilt  top,  $2.50 ;  sheep,  $3.50 ; 
half  calf,  $4.50  per  volume.  Vol  VI  contains  the  History  of  the 
Formation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  a  Portrait  of 
Mr.  Bancroft. 

In  this  edition  of  his  great  work  the  author  has  made  extensive 
changes  in  the  text,  condensing  in  places,  enlarging  in  others,  and  care- 
fully revising.  It  is  practically  a  new  work  embodying  the  results  of 
the  latest  researches,  and  enjoying  the  advantage  of  the  author's  long 
and  mature  experience. 

M  On  comparing  this  work  with  the  corresponding  volume  of  the  '  Centena- 
ry '  edition  of  1876,  one  is  surprised  to  see  how  extensive  changes  the  author 
lias  found  desirable,  even  after  so  short  an  interval.  The  first  thing  that  strikes 
oii3  is  the  increased  number  of  chapters,  resulting  from  subdivision.  The  first 
volume  contains  two  volumes  of  the  original,  aud  is  divided  into  thirty-eiuht 
chapters  instead  of  eighteen.  This  is  in  itself  an  improvement.  But  the  new 
arrangement  ia  not  the  result  merely  of  subdivision ;  the  matter  is  rearranged  in 
such  a  manner  as  vastly  to  increase  the  lucidity  and  continuousness  of  treat- 
ment. In  the  present  edition  Mr.  Bancroft  returns  to  the  principle  of  division 
into  periods,  abandoned  in  the  'Centenary'  edition.  His  division  is,  however, 
a  new  one.  As  the  permanent  shape  taken  by  a  great  historical  work,  this  new 
arrangement  is  certainly  an  improvement.1'— The  Nation  {New  York). 

"  The  work  as  a  whole  is  in  better  shape,  and  is  of  course  more  authoritative 
than  ev^r'before.  This  last  revision  will  be  without  doubt,  both  from  its  desir- 
able form  and  accurate  text,  the  standard  one.'1 — Boston  Traveller. 

"  It  has  not  been  granted  to  many  historians  to  devote  half  a  century  to  the 
history  of  a  single  people,  and  to  live  long  enough,  and,  let  us  add,  to  be  willing 
and  wise  enough,  to  revise  and  rewrite  in  an  lionored  old  age  the  work  of  a 
whole  lifetime.1'— New  York  Mail  and  Express. 

"The  extent  and  thoroughness  of  this  revision  would  hardlvbe  guessed  with- 
out comparing  the  editions  side  by  side.  The  condensation  of  the  text  amounts 
to  something  over  one  third  of  the  previous  edition.  There  has  also  been  very 
considerable  recasting  of  the  text.  On  the  whole,  our  examination  of  the  first 
volume  leads  us  to  believe  that  the  thought  of  the  historian  loses  nothing  by  the 
abbreviation  of  the  text.  A  closer  and  later  approximation  to  the  best  results  of 
scholarship  and  criticism  is  reached.  The  public  gains  by  its  more  compact 
brevity  and  in  amount  of  matter,  and  in  economy  of  time  and  money.11—  The  In- 
dependent {New  York). 

"  There  is  nothing  to  be  said  at  this  day  of  the  value  of  ■  Bancroft.'  Its  au- 
thority is  no  longer  in  dispute,  and  as  a  piece  of  vivid  and  realistic  historical 
writing  it  stands  among  the  best  works  of  its  class.  It  may  be  taken  for  granted 
that  this  new  edition  will  greatly  extend  its  usefulness. "'—Philadelphia  North 
American. 


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HISTORY  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES, 

from  the  Revolution  to  the  Civil  War.  By  John  Bach  McMaster. 
To  be  completed  in  five  volumes.  Vols.  I  and  II,  8vo,  cloth,  gilt 
top,  $2.50  each. 

Scope  op  the  Work. — In  the  course  of  this  narrative  much  is  written  of  wars, 
conspiracies,  and  rebellions  ;  of  Presidents,  of  Congresses,  of  embassies,  of  treaties, 
of  the  ambition  of  political  leaders,  and  of  the  rise  of  great  parties  in  the  nation. 
Yet  the  history  of  the  people  is  the  chief  theme.  At  eveiy  stage  of  the  splendid 
progress  which  separates  the  America  of  Washington  and  Adams  from  the  Amer- 
ica in  which  we  live,  it  has  been  the  author's  purpose  to  describe  the  dress,  the 
occupations,  the  amusements,  the  literary  canons  of  the  times;  to  note  the  changes 
of  manners  and  morals ;  to  trace  the  growth  of  that  humane  spirit  which  abol- 
isJied  punishment  for  debt,  and  reformed  the  discipline  of  prisons  and  of  jails;  to 
recount  the  manifold  improvements  which,  in  a  thousand  ways,  hove  multiplied 
the  conveniences  of  life  and  ministered  to  the  happiness  of  our  race;  to  describe  the 
rise  and  progress  of  that  long  series  of  mechanical  inventions  and  discoveries  which 
is  now  the  admiration  of  the  world,  and  our  just  pride  and  boast ;  to  tell  how, 
under  the  benign  influence  of  liberty  and  peace,  there  sprang  up,  in  the  course  of  a 
single  century,  a  prosperity  unparalleled  in  the  annals  of  human  affairs. 

"  The  pledge  given  by  Mr.  McMaster,  that '  the  history  of  the  people  shall  be 
the  chief  theme,'  is  punctiliously  and  satisfactorily  fulfilled.  He  carries  out  his 
promise  in  a  complete,  vivid,  and  delightful  way.  We  should  add  that  the  liter- 
ary execution  of  the  work  is  worthy  of  the  indefatigable  industry  and  unceasing 
vigilance  with  which  the  stores  of  historical  material  have  been  accumulated^ 
weighed,  and  sifted.  The  cardinal  qualities  of  style,  lucidity,  animation,  and 
energy,  are  everywhere  present.  Seldom,  indeed,  has  a  book,  in  which  matter 
of  substantial  value  has  been  so  happily  united  to  attractiveness  of  form,  been 
offered  by  an  American  author  to  his  fellow-citizens.11 — New  York  Sun. 

"To  recount  the  marvelous  progress  of  the  American  people,  to  describe 
their  life,  their  literature,  their  occupations,  their  amusements,  is  Mr.  McMa&ter's 
object.  His  theme  is  an  important  one,  and  we  congratulate  him  on  his  success. 
It  has  rarely  been  our  province  to  notice  a  book  with  so  many  excellences  and 
so  few  defects.11— New  York  Herald. 

11  Mr.  McMaster  at  once  shows  his  grasp  of  the  various  themes  and  his  special 
capacity  as  a  historian  of  the  people.  His  aim  is  high,  but  he  hits  the  mark." — 
New  1  ork  Journal  of  Commerce. 

"  I  have  had  to  read  a  good  deal  of  history  in  my  day,  but  T  find  so  much 
freshness  in  the  way  Protestor  McMaster  has  treated  his  subject  itat  it  is  quite 
like  a  new  story. "—Philadelphia  Press. 

"Mr.  McMaster's  success  as  a  writer  seems  to  us  distinct  and  decisive.  In 
the  first  place  he  has  written  a  remarkably  readable  bistory.  His  style  is  clear 
and  vigorous,  if  not  always  condensed.  He  has  the  faculty  of  felicitous  com- 
parison and  contrast  in  a  marked  degree.  Mr.  McMaster  has  produced  one  of 
the  most  spirited  of  histories,  a  book  which  will  be  widely  read,  and  the  enter- 
taining quality  of  which  is  conspicuous  beyond  that  of  any  work  of  its  kind."— 
Boston  Gazette. 

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HISTORY  OF  CIVILIZATION  IN  ENGLAND.  By  Henry 
Thomas  Buckle.    2  vols.    8vo.    Cloth,  $4.00 ;  half  calf,  extra,  $8.00. 

"Whoever  misses  reading  this  book  will  miss  reading  what  is,  in  various 
respects,  to  the  trest  of  our  judgment  and  experience,  the  most  remarkable  book 
of  the  dav— one,  indeed,  that  no  thoughtful,  inquiring  mind  would  miss  reading 
for  a  gooiS  deal.  Let  the  reader  be  as  adverse  as  he  may  be  to  the  writer's  phi- 
losophy, let  him  be  as  devoted  to  the  obstructive  as  Mr.  Buckle  is  to  the  progress 
party,  let  him  be  as  orthodox  in  church  creed  as  the  other  is  heterodox,  as  dog- 
matic as  the  author  is  skeptical — let  him,  in  short,  find  his  prejudices  shocked 
at  every  turn  of  tbe  argument,  and  all  his  prepossessions  whistled  down  the 
wind — still,  there  is  so  much  in  this  extraordinary  volume  to  stimulate  reflection 
and  excite  to  inquiry,  and  provoke  to  earnest  investigation,  perhaps  (to  this  or 
that  reader)  on  a  track  hitherto  untrodden,  and  across  the  virgin  soil  of  untilled 
fields,  fresh  woods  and  pastures  new,  that  we  may  fairly  defy  the  most  hostile 
spirit,  the  most  mistrustful  and  least  sympathetic,  to  read  it  through  without  be- 
ing glad  of  having  done  so,  or  having  begun  it,  or  even  glanced  at  almost  any  one 
of  its  pages,  to  pass  it  away  unread."— New  Monthly  Magazine  (London). 

THE  ENGLISH  CONSTITUTION,  AND  OTHER  POLITICAL 
ESSAYS.  By  Walter  Bagehot.  Latest  revised  edition.  Contain- 
ing Essays  on  the  Characters  of  Lord  Brougham  and  Sir  Robert 
Peel,  Bart.,  never  before  published  in  this  country.  With  an  Amer- 
ican Preface.     12mo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

44  A  work  that  deserves  to  be  widely  and  familiarly  known.  Its  title,  however, 
is  so  little  suggestive  of  its  real  character,  and  is  so  certain  to  repel  and  mislead 
American  readers,  that  some  prefatory  words  may  be  useful  for  the  correction  of 
erroneous  impressions.  It  is  well  known  that  the  term  '  Constitution,'  in  its 
political  sense,  has  very  different  significations  in  England  and  in  this  country. 
With  us  it  means  a  written  instrument.  The  English  have  no  such  written  docu- 
ment. By  the  national  Constitution  they  mean  their  actual  social  and  political 
order— the  whole  body  of  laws,  usages,  and  precedents,  which  have  been  in- 
herited from  former  generations,  and  by  which  the  practice  of  government  is 
regulated.  A  work  upon  the  English  Constitution,  therefore,  brings  us  naturally 
to  the  direct  consideration  of  the  structure  and  practical  working  of  English 
political  institutions  and  social  life.  Mr.  Bagehot  is  not  so  much  a  partisan  or  an 
advocate  as  a  cool  philosophical  inquirer,  with  large  kuowledge,  clear  insight, 
independent  opinions,  and  great  freedom  from  the  bias  of  what  he  terms  '  that 
territorial  sectarianism  called  patriotism.'  Taking  up  in  succession  the  Cabinet, 
the  Monarchy,  the  House  of  Lords,  the  House  of  Commons,  he  considers  them 
in  what  may  be  called  their  dynamical  inter-actions,  and  in  relation  to  the 
habits,  traditions,  culture,  and  character  of  the  English  people.  We  doubt  if 
there  is  any  other  volume  so  useful  for  our  countrymen  to  peruse  before  visiting 
England."— From  the  American  Preface. 

HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS  FROM  AUGUS- 
TUS TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  By  William  E.  H.  Lecky. 
2  vols.     12mo.     Cloth,  $3.00;  half  calf,  extra,  $7.00. 

44  So  vast  is  the  field  Mr.  Lecky  introduces  us  to,  so  varied  and  extensive  the 
information  he  has  collected  in  it,  fetching  it  from  far  beyond  the  limits  of  his 
professed  subject,  that  it  is  impossible  in  any  moderate  space  to  do  more  than 
indicate  the  line  he  follows.  .  .  .  The  work  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  our 
higher  English  literature,  as  well  as  an  admirable  guide  for  those  who  may  care 
to  go  in  person  to  the  distant  fountains  from  which  Mr.  Lecky  has  drawn  for 
them  so  freely.  "—London  Times. 


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A  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY.  By  William  E.  H.  Lecky,  author  of  "History  of 
the  Rise  and  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,"  etc. 
Vols.  I,  II,  III,  and  IV.  Large  12mo.  Cloth,  $2.25  each ;  half  calf, 
$4.50  each. 

"  On  every  ground  which  should  render  a  history  of  eighteenth-century  Eng- 
land precious  to  thinking  men,  Mr.  Lecky's  work  may  be  commended.  The 
materials  accumulated  in  these  volumes  attest  an  industry  more  strenuous  and 
comprehensive  than  that  exhibited  by  Froude  or  by  Macaulay.  But  it  is  his 
supreme  merit  that  he  leaves  on  the  reader's  mind  a  conviction  that  he  not  only 
possesses  the  acuteness  which  can  discern  the  truth,  but  the  unflinching  purpose 
of  truth-telling."— New  York  Sun. 

"  Lecky  has  not  chosen  to  deal  with  events  in  chronological  order,  nor  does 
he  present  the  details  of  personal,  party,  or  military  affairs.  The  work  is  rather 
an  attempt "  to  disengage  from  the  great  mass  of  facts  those  which  relate  to  the 
permanent  forces  of  the  nation,  or  which  indicate  some  of  the  more  enduring 
features  of  national  life.'  The  author's  manner  has  led  him  to  treat  of  the  power 
of  monarchy,  aristocracy,  and  democracy;  of  the  history  of  political  ideas  ;  of 
manners  and  of  beliefs,  as  well  as  of  the  increasing  power  of  Parliament  and  of 
the  press."— Dr.  C.  K.  Adams's  Manual  of  Historical  Literature. 

HISTORY   OF   THE   RISE  AND  INFLUENCE  OF  THE 

SPIRIT  OF  RATIONALISM    IN    EUROPE.      By  Will- 

iam  E.  H.  Lecky.      2  vols.      Small  8vo.      Cloth,  $4.00 ;   half  calf, 

extra,  $8.00. 

"The  author  defines  his  purpose  as  an  attempt  to  trace  that  spirit  which 
Meads  men  on  all  occasions  to  suhordinate  dogmatic  theology  to  the  dictates  of 
reason  and  of  conscience,  and,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  to  restrict  its  influ- 
ence upon  life1— which  predisposes  men,  in  history,  to  attribute  all  kinds  of 
phenomena  to  natural  rather  than  miraculous  causes  ;  in  theology,  to  esteem 
succeeding  systems  the  expressions  of  the  wants  and  aspirations  of  that  religious 
sentiment  which  is  planted  in  all  men ;  and,  in  ethics,  to  regard  as  duties  only 
those  which  conscience  reveals  to  be  such."— Dr.  C.  K.  Adams's  Manual  of 
Historical  Literature. 

THE   LEADERS   OF   PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND: 

SWIFT,  FLOOD,  GRATTAN,  O'CONNELL.     By  Will- 

iam  E.  H.  Lecky.     12mo.     Cloth,  $1.75. 

"  A  writer  of  Lecky's  mind,  with  his  rich  imagination,  his  fine  ability  to  ap- 
preciate imagination  in  others,  and  his  disposition  to  be  himself  an  orator  upon 
the  written  page,  could  hardly  have  found  a  period  in  British  history  more  har- 
monious with  his  literary  style  than  that  which  witnessed  the  rise,  the  ripening, 
and  the  fall  of  the  four  men  whose  impress  upon  the  development  of  the 
national  spirit  of  Ireland  was  not  limited  by  the  local  questions  whose  discussion 
constituted  their  fame."— New  York  Evening  Post. 

HISTORY  OF  HENRY  THE  FIFTH :  KING  OF  ENGLAND, 
LORD  OF  IRELAND,  AND  HEIR  OF  FRANCE.  By  George  M. 
Towle.     8vo.     Cloth,  $2.50. 


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HOURS  WITH  GREEK  AND  LATIN  AUTHORS.  From 
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BEACONSFIELD.  A  SKETCH  OF  THE  LITERARY  AND 
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entirely  new  school  of  novel-writing,  and,  after  a  life  of  severe  trial  and  suffer- 
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ERASMUS  DARWIN,  By  Ernst  Kraus.  Translated  from  the 
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The  Author. 

SHORT  LIFE  OF  GLADSTONE.  By  C.  H.  Jones.  18mo. 
Paper,  35  cents ;  cloth,  60  cents. 

"In  two  hundred  and  fifty  pages,' the  author  has  succeeded  in  giving  a  clear 
impression  of  Gladstone's  career,  and,  what  is  hetter  still,  of  his  personality. 
Extracts  from  his  speeches  and  estimates  of  his  literary  work  are  given,  and  an 
excellent  feature  of  the  hook  is  its  short  but  significant  citations  from  the  press, 
which  help  the  reader  to  see  the  erreat  statesman  through  the  eyes  of  his  con- 
temporaries, both  friend  and  foe."— Boston  Courier. 

A  JOURNAL  OF  THE  REIGNS  OF  KING  GEORGE  IV 
AND  KING  WILLIAM  IV.  By  the  late  Charles  C.  F. 
Greville,  Esq.,  Clerk  of  the  Council  to  those  Sovereigns.  Elited 
by  Henry  Reeve,  Registrar  of  the  Privy  Council.  2  vols.  12mo. 
Cloth,  $4.00. 

"Since  the  publication  of  Horace  Walpole's  Letters,  no  book  of  greater 
historical  interest  has  seen  the  light  than  the  Greville  Memoirs.  It  throws  a 
curious,  and,  we  may  almost  say,  a  terrible  light  on  the  conduct  and  character  of 
the  public  men  in  England  under  the  reigns  of  George  IV  and  William  IV.  Its 
descriptions  of  those  kings  and  their  kinsfolk  are  never  likely  to  be  forgotten.'' 
—New  York  Times. 


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BIOGRAPHY. 

A  JOURNAL  OF  THE  REIGN  OF  QUEEN  VICTORIA. 

(Second  Part  of   "The  Greville  Memoirs.")     From  1837  to  1852. 

By  the   late   Charles   Greville,  Clerk  of  the  Council.      2  vols. 

Large  12mo.     Cloth,  $4.00. 

"Mr.  Greville's  Diary  is  one  of  the  most  important  contributions  which  have 
ever  been  made  to  the  political  history  of  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
He  is  a  graphic  and  powerful  writer;  and  his  usual  habit  of  making  the  record 
while  the  impression  of  the  events  was  fresh  upon  his  mind  gives  his  sketches 
of  persons  and  places,  and  his  accounts  of  conversations,  great  vividness.  The 
volumes  will  be  read  with  as  much  interest  for  their  sketches  of  social  life  as  for 
their  political  value."— London  Daily  News. 

RETROSPECT  OF  A  LONG  LIFE,  FROM  1815  TO  1883. 
By  S.  C.  Hall,  F.  S.  A.  With  Portraits  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  S.  C.  Hall. 
Crown  8vo.     Cloth,  $2.50. 

MEMOIR  AND  CORRESPONDENCE  OF  CAROLINE 
HERSCHEL  (Sister  of  Sir  William,  and  Aunt  of  Sir  John 
Herschel).  By  Mrs.  John  Herschel.  12mo.  Illustrated  with 
Portraits.     Cloth,  $1.75. 

RECOLLECTIONS   OF   PAST   LIFE.     REMINISCENCES  OF 

MEN,  MANNERS,  AND  THINGS.     By  Sir  Henry  Holland,  Bart. 

12mo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

•*  A  life  extending  over  such  a  period,  and  passed  in  the  most  active  manner, 
in  the  midst  of  the  best  society  which  the  world  has  to  offer,  must  necessarily  be 
full  of  singular  interest;  and  Sir  Henry  Holland  has  fortunately  not  waited  until 
his  memory  lost  its  freshness  before  recalling  some  of  the  incidents  to  it." — New 
York  Times. 

LIFE  OF  SAMUEL  LOVER.  ARTISTIC,  LITERARY,  AND 
MUSICAL.  With  Selections  from  his  Unpublished  Papers  and  Cor- 
respondence, with  Portrait.  By  Bayle  Bernard.  12mo.  Cloth, 
$2.00. 

STRAY  MOMENTS  WITH  THACKERAY:  HIS  HUMOR, 
SATIRE,  AND  CHARACTERS.  Being  Selections  from  his  Writ- 
ings, prefaced  with  a  Few  Biographical  Notes.  By  William  H. 
Rideing.     18mo.     Paper,  30  cents  ;  cloth,  60  cents. 


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BIOGRAPHY. 

LORD  MACAULAY :  HIS  LIFE— HIS  WRITINGS.  By  C.  H. 
JONES.     18mo.     Paper,  30  cents;  cloth,  60  cents. 

LIFE  OF  CAPTAIN  MARRYAT,  R.  N.  By  Florence 
Marryat.     2  vols.     12mo.     Cloth,  $4.00. 

RXJSKIN  ON  PAINTING.  With  a  Biographical  Sketch.  18mo. 
Paper,  30  cents ;  cloth,  60  cents. 

WILKES,  SHERIDAN,  FOX.  THE  OPPOSITION  UNDER 
GEORGE  III.     By  W.  F.  Rae.     12mo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

"  An  interesting,  a  truthful,  and  a  wholesome  hook." — London  Athenceum. 

"  A  book  which  embraces  vigorous  sketches  of  three  famous  men  like  John 
Wilkes,  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan,  and  Charles  James  Fox,  is  truly  worth  hav- 
ing. The  author  is  in  evident  sympathy  with  all  three  of  his  subjects."— Chicago 
Tribune. 

LIGHTS  OF  THE  OLD  ENGLISH  STAGE.  BIOGRAPH- 
ICAL AND  ANECDOTICAL  SKETCHES  OF  FAMOUS  ACTORS 
OF  THE  OLD  ENGLISH  STAGE.     18mo.    Paper,  30  cents. 

"  The  book  treats  of  Richard  Burbage  and  other  '  originals '  of  Shakespeare's 
characters,  the  Cibbers,  Garrick,  Charles  Macklin,  'Peg'  Wofflngton  and  George 
Anne  Bellamy,  John  Kemble  and  Mrs.  Siddons,  Cooke,  Edmund  Kean,  Charles 
Young,  Dora  Jordan,  and  Mrs.  Robinson.  A  more  interesting  group  of  persons 
it  would  be  hard  to  find."— New  York  World. 

ENGLISH  MEN  OF  SCIENCE:  THEIR  NATURE  AND 
NURTURE.    By  Francis  Galton,  F.  R.  S.     12mo.     Cloth,  $1.00. 

McCLELLAN'S   LAST   SERVICE   TO  THE   REPUBLIC, 

TOGETHER  WITH  A  TRIBUTE  TO  HIS  MEMORY.  By  George 
Ticknor  Curtis.  With  a  Map  showing  Position  of  Union  and  Con- 
federate Forces  on  the  Night  of  November  7,  1862.  12rao.  Paper 
cover,  30  cents. 

LIFE  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.  By  George  T.  Curtis.  Illus- 
trated with  Steel  Portrait  and  Woodcuts.  2  vols.  8vo.  Cloth, 
$4.00 ;  sheep,  $6.00 ;  half  morocco,  $10.00. 

A  most  valuable  and  important  contribution  to  the  history  of  American  parties 
and  politics,  and  to  the  best  class  of  our  literature.  It  is  a  model  biography  of  a 
most  gifted  man,  wherein  the  intermingling  of  the  statesman  and  lawyer  with 
the  husband,  father,  and  friend,  is  painted  so  that  we  feel  the  reality  of  the 
picture. 


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THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER.      A  MONO- 

GRAPH.     By  George  T.  Curtis.     8vo.     Paper,  50  cents. 

REPRESENTATIVE  NAMES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERA- 
TURE,    By  H.  H.  Morgan.     8vo.     Cloth,  $1.00. 

THE  NOVELS  AND  NOVELISTS  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY,  IN  ILLUSTRATION  OF  THE  MANNERS  AND 
MORALS  OP  THE  AGE.     By  W.  Forsyth.     12mo.     Cloth,  $1.50. 

LIFE  AND  PUBLIC  SERVICES  OF  SALMON  PORT- 
LAND CHASE.  By  J.  W.  Schuckers.  Illustrated.  8vo. 
Cloth,  $5.00;  sheep,  $6.00;  half  morocco,  $7.50. 

MEMOIRS  OF  GENERAL  Wo  T.  SHERMAN.     New  edition, 

revised,  and  with  Additions.     With  numerous  Maps  and  Portraits. 

2  vols.,  8vo.     Cloth,  $5.00. 

This  edition  of  General  Sherman's  memoirs  has  heen  thoroughly  revised,  and 
contains  two  new  chapters  and  importatff*appendices.  Fifteen  maps  and  sev- 
eral portraits,  not  given  in  the  first  edition,  enrich  the  present  issue.  The  por- 
traits consist  of  engravings  on  steel  of  Generals  Sherman,  Thomas,  Schofield, 
and  McPherson,  and  a  phototype  group  of  corps  commanders.  The  new  chapter 
at  the  end  of  the  work,  entitled  "After the  War,1'  throws  light  on  recent  contro- 
versies in  regard  to  President  Johnson's  purpose  in  wishing  to  send  General 
Grant  to  Mexico.  The  appendices  contain  numerous  letters  from  army  com- 
manders bearing  upon  events  of  the  war. 

THE   LIFE   OF  DAVID   GLASGOW   FARRAGUT,  FIRST 

ADMIRAL   OF   THE    UNITED    STATES    NAVY,  EMBODYING 

HIS  JOURNAL  AND  LETTERS.     By  his  Son,  Loyall  Farragut. 

With  Portraits,  Maps,  and  Illustrations.     8vo.     Cloth,  $4.00 ;  sheep, 

$5.00 ;  half  morocco,  $6.00. 

M  The  book  is  a  stirring  one,  of  course ;  the  story  of  Farrasut's  life  is  a  tale 
of  adventure  of  the  most  ravishing  sort,  so  that,  aside  from  the  value  of  this 
work  as  an  authentic  biography  of  the  greatest  of  American  naval  commanders, 
the  book  is  one  of  surpassing  interest,  corsidered  merely  as  a  narrative  of  diffi- 
cult and  dangerous  enterprises  and  heroic  achievements." — New  York  Evening 
Post. 

FARTHEST  NORTH;  Or,  THE  LIFE  AND  EXPLORATIONS 
OF  LIEUTENANT  JAMES  BOOTH  LOCKWOOD,  OF  THE 
GREELY  ARCTIC  EXPEDITION.  With  Portrait,  Map,  and  Illus- 
trations.    By  Charles  Lanman.     Small  12mo.     Cloth,  $1.25. 


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BIOGRAPHY. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF   WILLIAM   H.   SEWARD  (1801- 

1834),  WITH  A  LATER  MEMOIR  BY  HIS  SON,  FREDERICK 
W.    SEWARD,   LATE    ASSISTANT    SECRETARY    OF   STATE. 

Cloth,  $4.25  ;  sheep,  $5.25  ;  half  turkey,  $6.25  ;  full  turkey,  $8.25. 

STONEWALL   JACKSON:    A   MILITARY   BIOGRAPHY.     By 

John  Esten  Cooke,  formerly  of  General  Stuart's  Staff.  With  an 
Appendix,  containing  Personal  Reminiscences,  and  a  Full  Account 
of  the  Ceremonies  attending  the  Unveiling  of  Foley's  Statue,  includ- 
ing the  Oration  by  Moses  D.  Hoge,  D.  D.,  by  Rev.  J.  William  Jones, 
D.  D.,  author  of  "Personal  Reminiscences  of  General  Lee.1'  With 
Maps,  Portraits,  and  a  View  of  Foley's  Statue.  8vo.  Cloth,  $3.50; 
sheep,  $4.00. 

THE  LIFE  OF  GENERAL  ALBERT  SIDNEY  JOHN- 
STON. By  his  Son,  Colonel  William  Preston  Johnston.  1  large 
8vo  vol.,  774  pages.  With  Maps,  a  fine  Portrait  on  Steel,  and  8  full- 
page  Illustrations.     Cloth,  $5.00;  sheep,  $6.00;  half  turkey,  $7.00. 

DESTRUCTION  AND  RECONSTRUCTION:  PERSONAL 
EXPERIENCES  OF  THE  LATE  WAR.  By  Richard  Taylor, 
Lieutenant-General  in  the  Confederate  Army.     8vo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

PERSONAL  REMINISCENCES,  ANECDOTES,  AND  LETTERS 
OF  GENERAL  ROBERT  E.  LEE.  By  Rev.  J.  William  Jones 
(formerly  Chaplain  in  General  Lee's  Army).  Illustrated  with  Steel 
and  Wood  Engravings.  8vo.  Cloth,  $3.50;  sheep,  $4.50;  half 
morocco,  $5.50 ;   morocco,  $7.50. 

FOUR  YEARS  WITH  GENERAL  LEE:  BEING  A  SUM- 
MARY OF  THE  MORE  IMPORTANT  EVENTS  TOUCHING 
THE  CAREER  OF  GENERAL  ROBERT  E.  LEE,  IN  THE  WAR 
BETWEEN  THE  STATES;  TOGETHER  WITH  AN  AUTHOR- 
ITATIVE STATEMENT  OF  THE  STRENGTH  OF  THE  ARMY 
WHICH  HE  COMMANDED  IN  THE  FIELD.  By  Walter  H. 
Taylor,  of  his  Staff,  and  late  Adjutant-General  of  the  Army  of 
Northern  Virginia.     8vo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 


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LIFE  OF  GENERAL  ROBERT  E.  LEE.  By  John  Esten 
Cooke.  Illustrated  with  Portraits  on  Steel,  Maps,  and  Wood  En- 
gravings.    8vo.     Cloth,  extra,  $5.00 ;   sheep,  $6.00. 

A     BIOGRAPHY    OF    WILLIAM     CULLEN     BRYANT. 

WITH  EXTRACTS  FKOM  HIS  PRIVATE  CORRESPONDENCE. 

By  Parke  Godwin.      With  Two  Portraits  on  Steel — one  from  a 

Painting  by  Morse,  taken  in  1825,  and  one  from   a  Photograph, 

taken  in  1873.      2  vols.     Square  8vo.      (Uniform  with  Memorial 

Editions  of  Prose  Writings  and  Poetical  Works.)     Cloth,  gilt  top,  ' 

$6.00. 

Containing  a  full  account,  from  authentic  sources,  of  the  poet's  ancestry ;  of 
his  hoyhood  among  the  Hampshire  hills ;  of  his  early  poems;  of  his  ten  .years' 
life  as  a  country  lawyer;  of  his  long  editorial  career  in  New  York ;  of  hisinter- 
course  with  contemporaries ;  of  his  travels  abroad  and  at  home ;  of  the  origin  of 
many  of  his  poems ;  of  his  political  opinions ;  of  his  speeches  and  addresses ; 
and  of  the  honors  he  received. 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON:  POET  AND  PHILOSOPHER. 
By  A.  H.  Guernsey.  (Published  by  arrangement  with  Messrs. 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  publishers  of  the  complete  editions  of 
Emerson's  Works.)  A  companion  volume  to  "  Carlyle :  his  Life,  his 
Books,  his  Theories."     18mo.    Paper,  40  cents  ;  cloth,  Y5  cents. 

THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE.  By  the  late  J.  Marion  Sims,  M.  D. 
Edited  by  his  Son,  H.  Marion  Sims,  M.  D.     12mo.     Cloth,  $1.50. 

Under  the  simple  title  of  "The  Story  of  my  Life"  Dr.  Sims  has  in  the  most 
fitting  terms  narrated  the  origin  and  growth  of  those  achievements  in  surgery 
which  |by  the  general  judgment  of  enlightened  men  have  stamped  him  as  the 
benefactor  of  his  race.  The  account  of  Dr.  Sims's  early  struggle  is  of  the  deep- 
est interest. 

LIFE   AND   LETTERS   OF   FITZ-GREENE   HALLECK. 

Edited  by  James  Grant  Wilson.  Two  Steel  Engravings.  Uniform 
with  Halleck's  Poems.  12mo.  Cloth,  gilt  top,  $2.50;  half  calf, 
extra,  $4.50;  morocco,  $6.00. 

The  Same.  Large-paper  Edition.  Illustrated.  Cloth,  $10.00;  morocco 
antique,  $15. 


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BIOGRAPHY. 

LIFE  AND  CORRESPONDENCE  OF  THEODORE 
PARKER,  MINISTER  OF  THE  TWENTY-EIGHTH  CON- 
GREGATIONAL SOCIETY,  BOSTON.  By  John  Weiss.  Portrait 
and  Engravings.  2  large  vols.  8vo.  Cloth,  $4.00;  half  calf, 
extra,  $8.00. 

THE  LIFE,  CORRESPONDENCE,  AND  WRITINGS  OF 
ARCHBISHOP  HUGHES,  By  John  R.  G.  Hassard.  8vo. 
Morocco,  $4.50. 

LETTERS  OF  LIFE.  By  Mrs.  L.  H.  Sigourney.  12mo.  Cloth, 
$1.50;  half  calf,  extra,  $4.00. 

LITERATURE  IN  LETTERS ;  OR,  MANNERS,  ART,  CRITI- 
CISM, BIOGRAPHY,  HISTORY,  AND  MORALS  ILLUSTRATED 
IN  THE  CORRESPONDENCE  OF  EMINENT  PERSONS.  Edited 
by  James  P.  Holcombe,  LL.  D.  12mo.  Cloth,  $2.00;  half  calf, 
$4.50. 

"The  sources  of  pleasure  and  instruction  to  he  found  in  the  private  cor- 
respondence of  eminent  persons  have  never  heen  fully  explained ;  much  lees 
have  they  heen  rendered  accessible  to  the  hnlk  of  the  reading  public.  Our  lan- 
guage abounds  in  letters  which  contain  the  most  vivid  pictures  of  manners,  and 
the  most  faithful  and  striking  delineations  of  character,  which  are  full  of  wit, 
wisdom,  fancy,  useful  knowledge,  noble  and  pious  sentiment."— Extract  from 
Preface. 

JOHN  KEESE,  WIT  AND  LITTERATEUR.  A  BIO- 
GRAPHICAL MEMOIR.  By  William  L.  Keese.  Small  4to. 
Cloth,  gilt  top,  $1.25. 

John  Keese  was  a  popular  book-auctioneer  of  New  York  thirty  years  ago, 
whose  witticisms  were  the  town  talk.  "  If  John  Keese  should  quit  the  auc- 
tioneer business,  I  should  die  of  ennui,"  exclaimed  one  of  his  admirers.  Mr. 
Keese  was  known  to  all  the  literary  people  of  his  day,  and  these  memoirs  con- 
tain reminiscences  and  anecdotes  of  literary  circles  in  New  York  a  generation 
ago  that  will  be  valued  by  those  who  like  glances  at  past  local  conditions. 

LIFE  OF  JAMES  W.  GRIMES.  By  W.  Salter.  8vo.  Cloth, 
$3.50. 

LIFE   OF   EDWARD   LIVINGSTON.    By  C.  H.  Hunt.    With 

an  Introduction  by  George  Bancroft.     Portrait.      8vo.     Cloth, 
$4.00. 


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BIOGRAPHY. 

THE  LIFE  OF  SAMUEL  F.  B.  MORSE,  INVENTOR  OF 
THE  RECORDING  TELEGRAPH.  By  S.  I.  Prime.  Illustrated 
with  Steel  Plates  and  Wood  Engravings.  8vo.  Cloth,  $5.00; 
sheep,  $6.00;  half  morocco,  $7.50;  morocco,  $10.00. 

LIFE  OF  EMMA  WILLARD.  By  John  Lord,  LL.  D.  With 
two  Portraits  on  Steel.     12mo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

RECOLLECTIONS  AND  OPINIONS  OF  AN  OLD  PI- 
ONEER. By  P.  H.  Burnett,  First  Governor  of  the  State  of 
California.     12mo.     Cloth,  $1.75. 

Mr.  Burnett's  life  has  been  full  of  varied  experience,  and  the  record  takes  the 
reader  back  prior  to  the  discovery  of  gold  in  California,  and  leads  him  through 
many  adventures  and  incidents  to  the  time  of  the  beginning  of  the  late  war. 

'*  I  have  been  a  pioneer  most  of  my  life ;  whenever,  since  my  arrival  in  Cali- 
fornia, I  have  seen  a  party  of  immigrants,  with  their  ox-teams  and  white-sheeted 
wagons,  I  have  been  excited,  have  felt  younger,  and  was  for  the  moment  anxious 
to  make  another  trip."—  The  Author. 

LIFE  OF  JOHN  RANDOLPH,  OF  ROANOKE.   By 

Hugh  II.  Garland.     Portraits.     Two  volumes  in  one.    8vo.    Cloth, 

$2.00. 

ELIHTJ  BURRITT:  A  MEMORIAL  VOLUME,  CONTAINING  A 
SKETCH  OF  HIS  LIFE  AND  LABORS.  With  Selections  from 
his  Writings  and  Lectures,  and  Extracts  from  his  Private  Journals 
in  Europe  and  America.  Edited  by  Charles  Northend,  A.  M. 
12mo.     Cloth,  $1  75. 

THE  LIFE  AND  PUBLIC  SERVICES  OF  DR.  LEWIS 
F.  LINN.  FOR  TEN  YEARS  A  SENATOR  OF  THE  UNITED 
STATES  FROM  THE  STATE  OF  MISSOURI.  By  E.  A.  Linn  and 
N.  Sargent.     With  Portrait.     8vo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

OUTLINE  OF  THE  PUBLIC  LIFE  AND  SERVICES 
OF  THOMAS  F.  BAYARD,  SENATOR  OF  THE  UNITED 
STATES  FROM  THE  STATE  OF  DELAWARE,  1869-18S0, 
With  Extracts  from  his  Speeches  and  the  Debates  of  Congress.  By 
Edward  Spencer.     12mo.     Paper,  50  cents ;  cloth,  $1  00. 


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BIOGRAPHY. 

ESSAYS   AND   SPEECHES   OF  JEREMIAH  S.  BLACK. 

WITH  A  BIOGRAPHICAL   SKETCH.     By  Chauncey  F.  Black. 
With  a  Portrait  on  Steel.     8vo.     Cloth,  $3/75. 

LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  EMORY  UPTON,  COLONEL 
OF  THE  FOURTH  REGIMENT  OF  ARTILLERY,  AND  BREVET 
MAJOR-GENERAL  U.  S.  ARMY.  By  Peter  S.  Michie,  Professor 
U.  S.  Military  Academy.  With  an  Introduction  by  James  Harrison 
Wilson,  late  U.  S.  A.     With  Portraits.     8vo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

"  The  subject  of  the  following  memoir  was  widely  known  by  reputation  in  the 
military  prolession.  and  the  story  of  his  life  would,  at  least  to  military  men,  have 
been  a  matter  of  passing  interest.  The  tragic  circumstances  of  his  death  seemed 
to  demand  some  explanation  in  harmony  with  his  established  reputation  and 
character.  At  the  earnest  solicitation  of  his  nearest  relatives,  the  author,  al- 
though conscious  of  his  own  deficiencies,  undertook  the  task  of  compiling  a 
brief  record  of  General  Upton's  lite  for  his  family  and  immediate  personal 
friends.,,— From  Preface. 

LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  THOMAS  GOLD  APPLE- 
TON.  Prepared  by  Susan  Hale.  With  a  Portrait.  12mo. 
Cloth,  gilt  top,  $1.75. 

Mr.  T.  G.  Appleton,  it  is  needless  to  say,  was  well  known  in  social  and  literary 
circles  in  Europe  and  America,  and  distinguished  as  one  of  the  best  conversa- 
tionalists of  the  day.  The  present  work  consists  of  a  biographical  sketch,  selec- 
tions from  his  letters,  and  some  account  of  his  different  journeys. 

LOUIS  PASTEUR:  HIS  LIFE  AND  LABORS.  By  his  Son-in- 
Law.  Translated  from  the  French  l3y  Lady  Claud  Hamilton. 
With  an  Introduction  by  Professor  Tyndall.     12mo.     Cloth,  $1.25. 

"Since  the  first  studies  of  M.  Pasteur  on  molecular  dissymmetry,  down  to 
his  most  recent  investigations  on  hydrophobia,  on  virulent  diseases,  and  on  the 
artificial  cultures  of  living  contagia,  the  author  of  these  pages  has  been  able,  if 
not  to  witness  all,  at  least  to  follow  in  its  principal  developments,  this  uninter- 
rupted series  of  scientific  conquests."—  From  the  Preface. 

'•A  record  in  which  the  verities  of  science  are  endowed  with  the  interest  of 
romance."— Professor  Tyndall. 

MEMOIRS  OF  NAPOLEON:  HIS  COURT  AND  FAMILY.     By 

the  Duchess  d'Abrantes  (Madame  Junot).     2  vols.     12mo.     Cloth, 
$3.00. 

This  book  supplies  many  valuable  and  interesting  details  respecting  the 
Court  and  Family  of  Napoleon,  which  are  found  in  no  other  work.  The  author's 
opportunities  for  observation  were  excellent  and  long  continued,  and  she  has 
availed  herself  of  them  so  effectually  as  to  present  us  with  a  very  lively,  enter- 
taining, and  readable  book,  as  well  as  to  supply  important  materials  for  future 
historians  and  biographers. 


New  York:  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  1,  3,  &  5  Bond  Street. 


D.  APPLETON  &  OO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


BIOGRAPHY. 

MEMOIRS     OF     MADAME     DE     REMUSAT.      1802-1808. 
Edited  by  her  Grandson,  Paul  de  Remusat,  Senator.     In  8  vols., 
"paper  covers,  8vo,  $1.50;   also,  in  1  vol.,  cloth,  12mo,  $2.00;   half 
calf,  $3.50. 

"These  memoirs  are  not  only  a  repository  of  anecdotes  and  of  portraits 
sketched  from  life  by  a  keen-eyed,  quick-witted  woman ;  but  some  of  the  au- 
thor's reflections  on  social  and  political  questions  are  remarkable  for  weight  and 
penetration."— New  York  Sun. 

"Madame  de  Remusat's  keenness  of  intelligence,  and  her  intimacy  with 
Josephine,  to  which  she  was  not  only  admitted  but  welcomed,  gave  her  those  ex- 
traordinary opportunities  which  she  has  turned  to  so  good  account  in  these 
4  Memoirs.'  The  work,  as  a  whole,  is  at  once  the  most  interesting  and  the  most 
damaging  commentary  on  the  character  of  Napoleon  that  has  ever  been  pro- 
duced."—Dr.  C.  K.  Adams's  Manual  of  Historical  Literature. 

A  SELECTION  FROM  THE  LETTERS  OF  MADAME 
DE  REMUSAT.  1804-1814.  Edited  by  her  Grandson,  Paul 
de  Remusat,  Senator.  Uniform  with  "  Memoirs  of  Madame  de 
Remusat,"  1802-1808.     12mo.     Cloth,  $1.25. 

**  'A  Selection  from  the  Letters  of  Madame  de  Remusat  to  her  Husband  and 
Son'  has  been  published  by  the  Appletons.  Coming  closely  upon  the  fascinating 
memoirs  of  that  lady,  they  possess  the  same  interest,  and  will  add  to  the  reader's 
knowledge  of  social  and  political  life  in  France  in  the  days  of  the  first  Napoleon." 
— Boston  Evening  Transcript. 

VOLTAIRE.     By  John  Morley.     12mo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

CONTENTS.— Preliminary ;  English  Influences ;  Literature ;  Berlin ;  Relig- 
ion; History;  Ferney. 

FRENCH  MEN  OF  LETTERS,  Personal  and  Anecdotical 
Sketches  of  Victor  Hugo,  Alfred  de  Musset,  Theophile  Gautier, 
Henri  Murger,  Sainte-Beuve,  Gerard  de  Nerval,  Alexandre  Dumas, 
fils,  Emile  Augier,  Octave  Feuillet,  Victorien  Sardou,  Alphonse 
Daudet,  and  Emile  Zola.  By  Maurice  Mauris.  Paper,  35  cents, 
cloth,  60  cents. 

HISTORY  OF  GENERAL  JAMES  A.  GARFIELD'S 
PUBLIC  LIFE.  (The  Republican  Text-Book  for  the  Campaign 
of  1880.)  By  B.  A.  Hinsdale,  A.  M.,  President  of  Hiram  College. 
8vo.     Paper,  50  cents. 

LIFE  OF  WINFIELD  SCOTT  HANCOCK,  MAJOR  GEN- 
ERAL  UNITED  STATES  ARMY.  By  Rev.  D.  X.  Junkin,  D.  D., 
and  Frank  H.  Norton.     12mo.     Cloth,  $1.50. 


New  York:  D.  APPLETON  k  CO.,  1,  3,  &  5  Bond  Street 


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